DB Range Mystery

[7string]

Ok, I discovered something and am not sure what it is. I use GT 3 Pro and when I right click on a bus or channel meter a box pops up with a bunch of things in it. I checked the manual but there's not much detail so if anybody can add some insight to this I'd appreciate it. Here's what I got:

12 db Range
24 db Range
42 db Range
60 db Range
78 db Range
90 db Range

What does all this mean? It is currently checked at 42.

Now, I looked a little more and found the playback meter is set:

Peak
Post Fader
42 db

Record meter:

Peak
42 db

Bus meter:

Peak
Post Fader
42 db

Are these settings ok? Should I change anything? I'm assuming they are ok as the are the defaults or at least I'm assuming that too.

HELP!

[SouthSIDE Glen]

7,

It looks as though those are simply settings for setting the display range for your meters; i.e. do you want the meter range to go from -90dB to 0 or do you just want to zoom in on the top 12 dBs from -12 to zero, or something in between. These settings should in and of themselves have no effect on your recording or playback.

If you want to see what's happening (meter-wise) down near the noise floor, set the range to 90. If you want to concentrate on only the "headroom area" in the to 12 dBs of your range set it for that. You currently have everything set to a 42dB range, which is right in the middle, and - unless you have a personal preference - it should suit you fine for all but the above-mentioned special case exceptions.

G.

[7string]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

7,

It looks as though those are simply settings for setting the display range for your meters; i.e. do you want the meter range to go from -90dB to 0 or do you just want to zoom in on the top 12 dBs from -12 to zero, or something in between. These settings should in and of themselves have no effect on your recording or playback.

If you want to see what's happening (meter-wise) down near the noise floor, set the range to 90. If you want to concentrate on only the "headroom area" in the to 12 dBs of your range set it for that. You currently have everything set to a 42dB range, which is right in the middle, and - unless you have a personal preference - it should suit you fine for all but the above-mentioned special case exceptions.

G.

Thanks G! I didn't think it would affect the recording or playback. I guess I was more curious as to what they were for and why so many choices. Can you expound a bit on the 'concentrate only on the "headroom area"' and the noise floor parts?

Thanks again!

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by 7string

Can you expound a bit on the 'concentrate only on the "headroom area"' and the noise floor parts?

Well, I'm not sure I'd personally have a whole lot of use for either of those extremes in ranges, but here's all I can think of for those settings...

The -90 selection makes a little more sense to me in that it could possibly be used to watch what's happening at extremely low volume levels. If I remember my numbers correctly (and if I don't somebody please correct me on this) 90dB is just about the dynamic range available with 16 bits of digital resolution, as is available in "standard" format WAV files and CD audio. So the 90dB range setting on the meters theoretically can show you the entire 16-bit range of volume from dead quiet to digital saturation. As such, I could see maybe using this setting to measure noise levels in the signal chain or perhaps to detect low-level low frequency mud that might be leaking into your recording from room vibration or circuit problems or something like that.

The 12dB setting is harder for me to imagine. Perhaps in mastering or in soundtrack editing it might come in handy to "zoom in" on the top 12dB just to get a higher resolution on the metering; this could help the engineer to make sure that left and right channels are at the exact same volume for some sound effect or edit. Beyond that, I'm not sure what other use there might be for that feature. Perhaps someone else has some legit apps for such high resolution metering that I'm not thinking of offhand.

G.