how to find peak and rms? analyzers, etc

  • Thread starter Thread starter JFrankParnell
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JFrankParnell

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Ok, i'm working in Sonar. I've got a mix that i like. I would like to find out what is my peak level (do i need to normalize or is the peak of the song at the highest possible).

Also, i'd like to run my mix through some sort of analyzer and find out what the average loudness is, rms. I would like to compare my rms to similar commercial songs, and see if some tweaking might need to be done.

I remember in the olden days, i think it was in Vegas or something, you could run an analysis on tracks to find this out.

Is there a mastering vst plugin that does this, a function on Sonar that i'm not finding, or a different program that has such an analysis?

Oh, please lets not get into a semantics and theory war about peaks and loudness :) I just want to know what programs can give me this info that i seek.

thanks,
J
 
Doesn't sonar have any level meters? If it does, those are peak meters. RMS meters can be downloaded from several different places.
 
The other thing to keep in mind is that under no circumstances should your unmastered mix come in at the same RMS as a commercial recording. There are a good number of things that happen in the mastering process, but one of them is the overall volume gets nudged up a couple dB.

This is doubly true in that I believe most mastering houses request final mixes to be submitted peaking under -6db.
 
of course sonar has meters, but i wanted a full file analysis. I found that in adobe audition, you can do Window>Amplitude Statistics. It works pretty well, though i'd still be interested in other analyzers.

This probly wont go to a mastering house. I put some mastering vsts on my main bus and mixed with them on. Lots of my mixes will be just 'to listen to' so i figure this is a good way to get a good level to play in the car, ipod, etc.

here are some stats, via Adobe Audition: (my song vs. Amerasian by Thermadore)
listen to mine here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgdILTbwKQc
You Shine
Left Right
Peak Amplitude: -.73 dB .01 dB
Possibly Clipped: 0 65
DC Offset: -.055 -.071

Minimum RMS Power: -65.87 dB -63.22 dB
Maximum RMS Power: -12.52 dB -9.37 dB

Average RMS Power: -21.87 dB -18.95 dB
Total RMS Power: -21.12 dB -18.18 dB



amerasian
Left Right
Peak Amplitude: 0 dB 0 dB
Possibly Clipped: 226 251
DC Offset: -.033 -.032

Minimum RMS Power: -74.9 dB -75.27 dB
Maximum RMS Power: -7.3 dB -7.34 dB

Average RMS Power: -15.88 dB -15.66 dB
Total RMS Power: -15.11 dB -14.88 dB
 
Lots of my mixes will be just 'to listen to' so i figure this is a good way to get a good level to play in the car, ipod, etc.
Click to expand...

Please excuse my ignorance - I must be a bit out of touch with today's technology - but in what era did volume controls disappear? :)

There's no need to crush something to death in order to be able to hear it. Its not 'quiet' just because it isn't a square wave squashed into the top four bits of a wav file :D. In fact it would probably seem a lot louder and punchier if you just turned it up a bit...
 
From the looks of the numbers, your mix is unbalanced. 3db is a pretty big amount to be leaning to one side like that. If you got both sides at the same volume, you would be able to get it louder.
 
Of course he'd have more punch and better sound if he were to just turn the playback device up a bit while listening (if he's done mastering and ends up with a larger crest like the old days) but we ARE competing with the new industry standard of crunching the peaks by 6db and getting the RMS to park around -6db or more... If someone else (non musical) was listening to his recording in succession with one of these industry standard recordings, the person would have to turn their stereo up, and then what if the next song to come up (lets say this person has their cd, mp3 player on shuffle) is the new, crushed type... Well then its way too loud, either damaging their speakers/headphones or even worse: THEIR EARS!!! This is where us new guys are facing difficulties in juggling quality over volume.. We can't expect non-musical people to go through and normalize all of their commercial music down 6db so the volumes will be equal to those recorded in home studios and mastered the old way.. Can someone back me up?

Maybe our new government legislation can pass a bill requiring our current music industry to not mass produce and distribute recordings exceeding -12db RMS and then our music will a) have better dynamics and clearer sound, and b) poor kids listening to music won't have crazy jumps in volume every other song damaging their ears...
 
Scott, I'm actually one of the few on here who will agree there are a few sacrifices that have to be made if you're releasing music to the 'ignorant masses'. Obviously you can't aim to reach levels of 'loudness' achieved by people who crush music for a living, but you can't avoid some amount of mushing with an L2 if you want to put a mix on myspace or distribute MP3s. I think you can tone things back a bit if you're distributing on CD, as you can quite safely assume that someone buying a CD in preference to a low-quality internet download is likely to understand where their volume control is, but its still worth taking out any unneeded headroom and any stray peaks.

Many will disagree with what I just said, but who cares :) I can see this thread sinking into yet-another-loudness-wars-debate...


But the OP was talking about having stuff for his own personal listening pleasure, in which case it seems silly not to try and keep it sounding as nice and loooveeely as possible :)
 
JFrankParnell said:
Ok, i'm working in Sonar. I've got a mix that i like. I would like to find out what is my peak level (do i need to normalize or is the peak of the song at the highest possible).

Also, i'd like to run my mix through some sort of analyzer and find out what the average loudness is, rms. I would like to compare my rms to similar commercial songs, and see if some tweaking might need to be done.
Click to expand...

Here are a couple free meters that will show your peak and rms levels for your pre master.

The rms levels numbers will not tell you a lot. You can have 2 different songs with the same rms levels where one will still be perceived louder by your ear.

http://www.solid-state-logic.com/music/X-ISM/index.asp

http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/
 
mattr said:
But the OP was talking about having stuff for his own personal listening pleasure, in which case it seems silly not to try and keep it sounding as nice and loooveeely as possible :)
Click to expand...
Wul, kinda. We're talking about live recordings of a 3 piece band. The video i posted earlier was recorded on only the 3rd night the drummer was with us. So, we want to hear what we sound like, get ideas, etc. But, also, we have friends asking to hear samples, so we'd like like to post to facebook, email an mp3, etc. These mp3s have to be the right level to avoid what scottmd06 was saying.

However, as things progress, we'll make an actual album, but even then, we're going to want a nice, hot level (no not super frickin compressed or anything, but we want it to stand up to commercially produced music of similar genre).

Waltz Mastering: that SSL is helpful for sure. I cant get the pleasurize one without a large reg fee.

J
 
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