Doubt about limiter and mastering tracks at home.

andrushkiwt said:
I have it. Here's the pic of the limiter.

View attachment 96875
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Ah ok. No, I meant the master fader.

Here, when I right click on the master fader, this comes up ( I moved it to the middle of the screen, but it opens right at the fader).

You see where it says "Display offset". I'm hoping there's something like that going on with his Studio One set up.
 

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sorry, i edited it to include the mastering meter. I grabbed those from google. Not sure about the mastering settings. i'll look around
 
andrushkiwt said:
sorry, i edited it to include the mastering meter.
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OK, didn't see that. Yeah, try right clicking or checking the manual to see if there's anything like what I'm talking about. It's not really "mastering settings". It's just something that might be adjustable on the master fader.
 
RAMI said:
OK, didn't see that. Yeah, try right clicking or checking the manual to see if there's anything like what I'm talking about. It's not really "mastering settings". It's just something that might be adjustable on the master fader.
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ok, i called it mastering settings because Studio One has a separate "mastering suite". I've heard ppl say they usually open their wav as a new project and master it there. But in S1, there's a whole different app that is setup specifically for mastering. but you may be right as well. just trying to find something that might help him get his meters calibrated or whatever back to "normal", for lack of a better word.
 
It might also have nothing to do with what I'm saying. It could be this, too....which I never knew:
bouldersoundguy said:
When referencing RMS levels it helps to specify the measurement tool. Some use a 0dB square wave and some use a 0dB sine wave. The ones using the sine wave will show a given file as "louder" (lower RMS number) by several dB than the ones using square wave.
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RAMI said:
It might also have nothing to do with what I'm saying. It could be this, too....which I never knew:
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I think bsg is going to have explain that one or link to something that demonstrates what he's talking about.

The RMS of a true square wave is the same as its peak level. The RMS of a sine wave is like half the square root of the peak. The RMS of any other signal is whatever the root of the mean of the squares of the samples in the window comes out to be.

Some meters are compensated so that the RMS and peak levels appear closer than they are, for whatever reason. Reaper's meters let you decide how much of that compensation to apply, and also to just offset them so that (for example) they line up with analog VU or kind of whatever else works best for you.
 
It's a discrepancy I've seen before, something I read about after I had been noticing it. A sine wave has less power that a square wave with the same peak, so there's less of a difference between that and any given song's level, and that gives a smaller number than when a square wave is the reference for 0dB RMS. It's consistent, things always seem to be one or the other level.

I think this explains it, first section "RMS levels": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBFS

These two programs don't have any calibration on their RMS measurement. There's always a 3dB difference, and I've noticed this in other software. Pro Tools matches what Sound Forge measures and other stuff I've seen matches the TT DR Meter.

RMS-TT-DR_Meter.jpg

RMS-Sound_Forge_6.jpg
 
Another consideration that may have some impact is the large number of metering options and their setting variations found in most DAWs, not to mention multiple portions along a signal chain that you can meter...so it's possible to not have everything set to a single reference, or that you've changed your reference and therefor the readings are relative to that and not to some other one.

I know in my DAW (Samplitude ProX)...I can alter the metering and the reference in many ways...and it's possible to forget how you have things set...so when comparing to some other readings on other systems...it's apples and oranges.

I've gotten to the point where I don't pay a lot of attention to my DAW metering, other than as an overall guide withing a set situation....like comparing two tracks to see how their levels match up, etc. Reason is...I do all my level setting and metering while I track to tape...so I'm setting levels in the analog domain. Then when I transfer the tracks to the DAW...I let them go where they fall. I don't obsess about what dBFS I'm hitting, etc. IOW, I know the levels are right, because they were right during tracking in the analog domain.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
It's a discrepancy I've seen before, something I read about after I had been noticing it. A sine wave has less power that a square wave with the same peak, so there's less of a difference between that and any given song's level, and that gives a smaller number than when a square wave is the reference for 0dB RMS. It's consistent, things always seem to be one or the other level.

I think this explains it, first section "RMS levels": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBFS
Click to expand...
I'll check out the Wiki article later. But ok, that helps explain it. I actually used to have the TT DR meter years ago, but I stopped using it because it was always giving me much higher RMS levels than REAPER's meters, so I just decided to go with REAPER, especially since I knew my stuff wasn't averaging -9 or -8 RMS. It would be distorting to all hell if it was. So, I though the TT DR meter was just full of shit. Now I know that it probably wasn't full of shit, it was just giving the "other" reading.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
I think this explains it, first section "RMS levels": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBFS
Click to expand...
That's interesting, and something I never really thought about. I guess I always assumed that the RMS readings were referenced to the same 0dbfs level as the peaks, but I guess in most, 0db is the RMS level of a sine wave peaking at 0dbfs. I can say that Reaper (by default, if you haven't changed its settings) agrees with SoundForge.

That kind of confuses the issue of dynamic range, though, doesn't it? I mean, I would normally subtract RMS from peak to get DR, but if they're not referenced to the same level, you can't get a meaningful result...
 
Did any of you guys heard my mixes?

I will explain everything again. The "Loud as Hell" one is according to the metering of Studio One's master fader hitting like -5.5dB RMS. And that to me sounds horrible, because I can hear some kind of weird compression effect that makes my mix squashed.
The "Not So Loud" mix is hitting -7.5dB (according to the same Studio One meters) and to me it sounds okay.

Problem is, the band I'm working with wants their mastering similar to QOTSA's Lullabies To Paralyze, which is an unholy loud record. According to this site: Album details - Dynamic Range Database - the dynamic range of this CD is really low. You can view the info by yourselves. It says that the average RMS leve of the CD (which the band is using as a reference) is -5dB average.

Now I dont know what is the official way of monitoring RMS levels or anything, I'm just using what I got as a reference tool. And the levels displayed on this site actually match when I import the songs to Studio One, so I guess I'm not completely wrong with what I am doing.

Here are my mixes, I allowed them for downloading, meaning any of your can download them and use any metering tools you want: https://soundcloud.com/caio-molena/sets/limiter-test

Thanks again for every info.
 
None of your links in this thread are working for me. They all take me to a page that says "Limiter test", but it says there are no tracks on the page.
 
RAMI said:
None of your links in this thread are working for me. They all take me to a page that says "Limiter test", but it says there are no tracks on the page.
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I'm sorry, RAMI. Try it now, please, I just changed some settings.
 
Shit. I have to work, but I'll check it out later today, in a few hours. Sorry. I actually wanted to download and see what my meters tell me. That way, we'll both know that we're speaking the same language. Like, when you say "-5", for example, I'll know that it means "-10" for me, or whatever. I'll check it out later.
 
ashcat_lt said:
That kind of confuses the issue of dynamic range, though, doesn't it? I mean, I would normally subtract RMS from peak to get DR, but if they're not referenced to the same level, you can't get a meaningful result...
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I had a bit of a crisis on this for a minute, but I'm feeling better now. Those of us with meters calibrated to the square wave standard (which read lower) are fine here because it basically is referenced to 0dfs. The other way is just screwey. :)

BTW - In Reaper, if you want your meters to read as though calibrated to the sine wave, you'd want to adjust the Display Gain parameter. Display Offset moves where the little green bars are actually going to show on the meters, but the number scale slides with it, and the number at the bottom of the meter (that tells the maximum RMS level you've hit since you pushed play) will be the same as with no offset at all. Display Gain raises the actual level, so that it hits at a different place on that number scale, and reads out different.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Those of us with meters calibrated to the square wave standard (which read lower) are fine here because it basically is referenced to 0dfs. The other way is just screwey.
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That's what I'm thinking, because until CMolena did, I have never heard of any songs being louder than -9 RMS and even that's pushing it. I've read article after article about RMS levels and have never heard of tunes being in the -5 range.

Also, how do you figure out crest factor with those "other" meters?
 
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