How Do I Read Level Meters?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dr. Varney
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mshilarious said:
You set the meter's calibration to where you want it to end up, and then you manipulate your source (whether through gain change or compression, or usually both) until the needle is happily bouncing around 0VU.
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Okay, I've put the VU Dual on the master and set calibration to -12 (where I want it to end up) and I've tried increasing the volume. The LEDs are saying -12 but the VU meter isn't moving at all. Sorry, I still don't understand how this works. What am I doing wrong?
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V
 
Dr. Varney said:
I don't know - why does it remind you of Sesame St? One episode in particular or just generally? Any You Tube URLs you could point us to...?
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Well, I'd vote for THE definitive Sesame Street clip: the Ricky Gervais and Elmo interview! A must see! :D

On topic: You can't expect an RMS meter and a peak meter to be anywhere close to each other, and a 10dB difference would not be unusual. But if you wanted to compare your Niant VU calibration to other RMS metering, you can get a plug called "Inspector" for free from RNDigital (and other legal download sites). It has your standard peak level metering, and on the outside of those bars are instant-read RMS meters also.

Now because they are faster response than Jon's VU emulators, their moment-by-moment readings may not match, but they should give you a good ballpark idea at least.

This post has been brought to you by the letter...

G.
 
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I think you're overthinking this. As long as you're not going into the red on your meters, and the loudness sounds the same to you (if that's what you want), then you're OK.

Those plosives and such can be taken care of through some compression. In fact if your vocal lines are very dynamic (which is a good possibility) some compression to smooth out the dynamics and have them sit well might be a good idea anyway.
 
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noisewreck said:
I think you're overthinking this. As long as you're not going into the red on your meters, and the loudness sounds the same to you (if that's what you want), then you're OK.
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Quite possibly and this is what I was thinking... But it's this idea that things sound louder when they aren't, that escapes me. If something sounds louder, then to me, it must be louder. If I can't rely on meters to makes sense of what I'm hearing, then what's the point of me having meters? Yeah, I know meters are important but they're just not helping me at this point.

I feel like disabling them all and just closing my eyes. Should I just read off the master output meter?

noisewreck said:
Those plosives and such can be taken care of through some compression. In fact if your vocal lines are very dynamic (which is a good possibility) some compression to smooth out the dynamics and have them sit well might be a good idea anyway.
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Yes, but I don't know how to use a compressor yet. What's the best way to learn? I've tried using one and it sounds like nothing I couldn't do with an equaliser. That's probably because I'm using it wrong.

I'm having fun up to the point where compression is allegedly needed. I open one up, fiddle with it, get confused and close it again. Does anyone know where I can find some good tutorials on this?

Glen said:
You can't expect an RMS meter and a peak meter to be anywhere close to each other
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Why not? Okay - if not, which one is true?

Dr. V
 
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Dr. Varney said:
This is what I was thinking... But it's this idea that things sound louder when they aren't, that escapes me. If something sounds louder, then to me, it must be louder.
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"Loudness" is a fairly imprecise science because our ears and brains have their own strange ways of working and interpreting sounds, and to add to this everyone is different.

The main thing to realise in this situation is that perceived loudness is affected by duration. A 1 second tone will seem louder than a 0.05 second tone of exactly the same amplitude. This Wikipedia article goes into a big more detail...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness

So if you have two signals they can both be peaking at the same level, but one could peak there every second or two and the rest of the time have a very low level, whilst they other sustains a high level signal most of the time. Judging them just from peak meters they would both appear to be the same 'level', but listening to them they would have different perceived loudnesses.

An RMS meter acts as an indication of the average level, which gives a better idea of how 'loud' something will be perceived to be.
 
Dr. Varney said:
This is what I was thinking... But it's this idea that things sound louder when they aren't, that escapes me. If something sounds louder, then to me, it must be louder.
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They are. That's the definition of loudness. ;) Notice that meters are not called "loudness meters", because that is not what they are measuring, they are only measuring specific character values.

Going back to the temperature analogy, it's like trying to use a thermometer to measure how nice of a day it is. Knowing the temperature will only get you so far on that ladder if you don't also know whether it's raining or sunny, dry or raining, calm or blowing like a hurricane, etc.
Dr. Varney said:
If I can't rely on meters to makes sense of what I'm hearing, then what's the point of me having meters? Yeah, I know meters are important but they're just not helping me at this point.
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Rely upon your ears, not meters to determine perceived loudness/volume, since it's your ears doing the perceiving ;). Rely upon your peak meters to make sure you don't go into the red and clip your signal. That's it. Everything else is trivia.
Dr. Varney said:
Does anyone know where I can find some good tutorials on this?
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Not to be a skipping record, but I have one in the Resources section of my website, called "Compression Uncompressed".

G.
 
Dr. Varney said:
Why not? Okay - if not, which one is true?
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Peak meters and RMS meters do not read the same because they are measuring two different things.

They both are true, just like both the speedometer and the tachometer on your car's dashboard are true, even though they read different. They read different because they are measuring two different things.

G.
 
Glen's temperature and climate analogy is a good one. Here's another way to think about the time/duration thing...

Imagine you're standing somewhere quite warm but there's an icy cold wind blowing. If that wind blows just once every minute or so then it will still feel quite warm, but if its blowing constantly then you're gonna be freezing! The wind is the same temperature, speed, direction, etc, but the more often it blows, the colder it feels.

Wind = sound. Cold = loud. There you go :p
 
Oh shit. This used to be fun. The more I learn, the harder it gets. I don't know where the fuck I am now... Meters all over the place, compressors on every track, doing god knows what but making it sound distorted to high hell. It's a nightmare. I feel like deleting the bloody lot and starting again.

Help!? I need to go back to the start.

:mad:
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Southside Glen said:
Rely upon your ears, not meters to determine perceived loudness/volume, since it's your ears doing the perceiving . Rely upon your peak meters to make sure you don't go into the red and clip your signal. That's it. Everything else is trivia.
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Good... good GOOD! Okay... Right then... Got a new starting point. Don't hog meters. Listen. Glance, stay in the ballpark of -12 to -6dBFS. That's where I was before I started this thread.

Dr. V
 
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Right, where you started was after tracking. When you track, you gotta pay attention to the peak meter, because you do NOT want to exceed 0dBFS at your converter. That will cause hard clipping, which sounds really bad. Hence, the -12dBFS peak advice.

Nobody wants to release a finished mix with peaks at -12dBFS though. So you need to bring that volume up. How? Well, let's say you have two vocal tracks, one is a singer, and the other one is a rapper who spits hot fire :D Probably the fire-spitter had a more dynamic performance than the singer. If you were a good tracking engineer, you would have maybe had to use two different preamp gain settings to record the two, and both thus ended up peaking at -12dBFS.

So you singer is much louder than your rapper at the moment, because the singer's dynamic range, or what's called "crest factor" (difference between peak level and RMS level) is smaller than the rapper.

You can't just mix them equally, because that will leave the singer louder. If you just turn up the rapper so he is 0dBFS peak and leave the singer at -12dBFS peak, that might be a little better, but the rapper is still probably way too dynamic to sit well against the def ill beat the producah dropped.

What to do? Compress the rapper until he's at the same crest factor as the singer. Now you can adjust volume (after the compressor) to taste, still with plenty of headroom.

I would recommend starting out with a very easy compressor to use. One of the LA2A emulations would be ideal; they only have two knobs and a switch, and they are pretty well set for vocals. I imagine there are some freeware VSTs out there for the taking . . .
 
Meters are great for calibrating things and giving you a bird's eye view of what your audio is doing in general....but the only time to really freak out about what the meters are telling you is when:
1.) they ain't moving at all
or
2.) they are hitting/pinned in the clip zone!

:D

Otherwise...ballpark it...let your ears be your guide...you'll be fine. :)
 
There's a few people in this thread I'd give rep to for some great responses if this BBS didn't restrict only the honest people from giving rep.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
There's a few people in this thread I'd give rep to for some great responses if this BBS didn't restrict only the honest people from giving rep.

G.
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If I were you, I'd go around the Cave and neg rep everyone who posts there :laughings:

That should allow you to give greenies to the ones who really matter :D
 
noisewreck said:
If I were you, I'd go around the Cave and neg rep everyone who posts there
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Or I could just parachute naked into a cactus garden. Aw hell, why mess around; I'll just put on a BP uniform and run down the French Quarter spraying crude oil on all the etoufee and jambalya restaruants.

G.
 
mshilarious said:
I would recommend starting out with a very easy compressor to use. One of the LA2A emulations would be ideal; they only have two knobs and a switch, and they are pretty well set for vocals. I imagine there are some freeware VSTs out there for the taking . . .
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Try this guy out:
http://antress.er-webs.com/

The "Modern Lost Angel" plugin is an emulation of the LA-2A.
Dunno if it's a good emulation, but it has the simple controls at least.
It will serve as a fairly easy way to play around with a "broad strokes" compressor and sort of hear what one is supposed to do.
Once you've read Glen's excellent guide there, compare the LA-2A copy to a compressor with more controls for fine tuning and try to connect what controls on the more complex compressor correspond to the controls on the simpler one.

A warning, though. Last time I used these plugins (it's been a while) they were a bit buggy and caused my DAW to crash. Not immediately, but after I had about eight or nine of them going in a project.
So, use one to learn on, and try out a few at a time if you want, but if you end up finding a use for them and putting them all over your project, maybe save a backup without them loaded into it in case you run into any problems.
 
Thank, TC. I've gone ahead and downloaded them. The Antress Modern compressor is an elegant thing. It's much easier to understand what Glen is talkng about in his article, when faced with this set of controls and a simple meter. Recall 'Maximus'. Very smooth and powerful but rather confusing at first.

Thank you again - all of you, for some great input!
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"Bedtime reading" turned into the nightshift.
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Dr. V
 
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