Where to Place Dorrough in Master FX CHain

songsj

Member
I'm wondering where to place the Dorrough volume meter in a stereo master FX chain. It seems to work like it should if I put it first but if I put it last or after a volume Maximizer all I get are tons of over lights. If I turn it down to get rid of the over lights it is way too soft. I guess I'm wondering if it should be placed before the volume maximizer. I guess I can see it both ways, if it is first you have everything exactly the way you want it before it hits the maximizer but then you have all those overs after applying the maximizer. If you put it last you are controlling overs as the very last thing. I am confused or doing something wrong. FYI the overs are on the sum side not the difference.
 
The entire idea of that plugin is asinine to me. You can argue all day long whether analog sounds better than digital, but there is no way in fuck that analog metering - sensing, calculating, and displaying data about signal levels - can be better than digital. Analog measurement is always imprecise and slow. Analog math is always fuzzy. The computer knows for fuck sure how loud the signal is right now, and math is like exactly what it does. So, to use a computer to model an analog meter... Well, it's almost worse than that Virtual Analog Summing bus!

But anywho. I kinda figure that in mastering it's pretty important to know exactly what your final rendered file is going to do. Frankly, any plugs earlier in the chain will have their own meters anyway. What I want to see is how loud is what I'm actually sending out the door.

If you can't get it loud enough without overs, turn up your speakers. ;)
 
Thanks for your candid response. It is not a question of just turning the speakers up. The problem is that without all the overs; the level is way lower than a commercial recording and I mean way lower. This is when it is the last FX in the master chain. Only other thing I can think of is they talk about making sure your studio gear is calibrated. Now I'm not mixing with any outboard gear so I don't know how that would come into play in my situation. Perplexed.
 
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