level meters...are they acurate?

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Hello Again!
Sorry I've been away from the forum the last few weeks, been a little crazy around here.

Anyways, what I need to know is; are the level meters on the mixing consol in CWPA 9 accurate? I've been using a couple of various plugins with meters on the masters (ie the PSP AudioWare Vintage Meter and others) and whats happening is; the levels in Cakewalk show I'm clipping, and the meters on the plugs say I'm not. I'm not "hearing" any distortion, but I'm still concerned. I seem to have this problem when I'm recording as well...the meters will show I'm clipping or at least really close, but when I record, the wav file shows no where near that and the level is usually rather low...this is rather confusing me (which granted isn't hard to do lately).

I've also recently tried the Waves L2 plugin which, from what I understand, is also supposed to work as a hard limiter. Even with the L2 set about -1dB and showing no clip, Cakewalk shows I'm pushing past 0dB.

Has anyone else had this problem? Should I just more or less ignore the Cakewalk level meters and go with the plugs....or vise-versa? Is it possible the Cakewalk meters were designed to be a little "conservative"? I'm pretty much in the mastering stage of the project I'm working on, so obviously I'd like to get as much saturation of signal as possible (the ol' volume war thing, so to speak), but not sure which level meter I should rely on.

As always, I'm very greatful for you fine people sharing your collective wisdom!

Gentle Breezes to all!
Jim Walczak


p.s. To whoever had clued me in on the Cakewalk "Clean Audio Disk" tool...thank you! I finally got up the guts to try it and it worked fine...dumped over 10 gigs of junk of my drives!
 
my Sonar and Plug-in meters seem to all sing the same tune.

i have Waves bundle, Sonitus:FX (ultrafunk), DSP-FX, and autotune.

1 thing to note, make sure you are comparing apples to apples. when i record, i look at the peak meters. when i mix (playback), i look at both the peak and RSM levels. the RSM levels are much lower, but i use the difference between the two to give me a guide as to were i set my threshold and compression ratios.
 
levels...

It seems to primarily the peeks that seem to be the problem here. You said you were using Sonar...I wonder if maybe this was something that was "fixed" when they want to Sonar(?). I do realize that Peak and RMS are two different things. I had been wondering about this for a while, but what had really caught my attention on this was the PSP Vinatage Warmer and Vintage Meter plugins...they both have VU meters with Peak indicators. When I push the volume up a little, the Peak indicators do blink. I back the volume down to just under the peak's blinking, but the Cakewalk (again CWPA 9) meters are clippin like crazy. I also noticed this with the Waves L2 plugin. Again with the limiting set at -1db hard ceiling (nothing should be going past this), again the Cakewalk meters clip big time. With the L2 pluging, I have to back the ceiling down to around -3db before Cakewalk stops clipping. I've had some other small "flakes" with CWPA 9 as well...like with the automation off, it likes to occasionally put in random volume changes etc., so I'm just starting to wonder if this is just another CWPA 9 bug or something.

This has made me wonder though...is the CWPA 9 meters RMS or Peak? Since there are clip indicators on the meters I had -assumed- that they were showing the peaks...(?) How would I double check this and is there I way I can switch this back and forth (aka switch it from peak to RMS and vise-versa)?

I know sooner or later I'll probably upgrade to Sonar (as well as Windows XP), but I'm waiting till I do my next hardware upgrade...which probably won't be for a while due to money constraints. At the moment I'm only running on a Duron 700 w/512 RAM, but with 98SE I know it's not picking up the full 512 megs. I had tried using Windows 2000 Pro, but that turned into a -major- mess and I ended up taking it back off again and going back to 98SE. Other then the currant problem with the meter issue, 98SE and CWPA 9 seem to be running pretty well for me actually...I"m getting a solid 20 tracks off it with a decent amount of effects and such....as long as I don't get too carried away of course...the more effects I add, the more tracks I have to bounce down etc..

Time for the second cup of coffee,
Jim Walczak
 
the L1 never shows clipping because it's a look ahead limiter that prevents clipping. are you saying that the limiter will show that it isn't doing any limiting, yet cakewalk still shows that it is clipping?

i'm not sure that it's a problem, but it is strange.

i've got sonar set up to automatically clip any overflows.

take a look at your tracks in event view and make sure that you don't have any controller messages that are changing your volume settings. there were times when i would accidentally hit the snapshot button part-way through a mix.
 
crosstudio said:
...when i mix (playback), i look at both the peak and RSM levels. the RSM levels are much lower, but i use the difference between the two to give me a guide as to were i set my threshold and compression ratios.
Click to expand...

I know this is an old thread, but, Crosstudio could you give some examples of how you do this using numbers, please? I'm trying to gain some understanding on how to use compression, and I am also trying to understand the different meters.

Thanks,

Vice
 
Don't use the meters to set the compression (while they could guide you, use your ears instead).

Read about compression. :)
 
Thanks moskus... Good information. I'm still reading through it. I was more curious how he used the meters. But, the info did give me a more clear understanding as to what I'm doing...



Thanks,


Vice
 
Re: I agree...

Bstage said:
My Soundforge sems to always have a little more room to play than Sonar.
Click to expand...
So you are saying that if you play the exact same audio-file in SoundForge and Sonar, the meters will tell you different values?!?

I've never noticed anything like that... (but it could be that I'm just not paying attention :D)...
 
I used SoundForge awhile ago. I would noticed there seemingly was different in the meters between it and Sonar. It would seem as though the same program material would clip in Sonar and everything would be okay in SF. I never came up with an answer, so, I eventually left it alone. That was about a year or so back.


Vice
 
I think Crosstudio has a point. There are a difference between RMS and peak meters... ;)
 
The best effect from DestroyFX is the Skidder... ;)
 
here's how i use the RMS and Peak meters as a guide. remember that i've got Sonar set for clipping overflow:

let's say i've got a vocal track and the RMS levels seem to be hanging around -12db while the peak is smacking around -4db.

i'll start off with the threshold set for -12, and the ratio set for 2:1
with the attack set at the fastest time, and the gain set for +4.

now the RMS will be at -8db and any real peaks will hit at -4db.

the larger the difference between the RMS and peak levels, the higher compression ratio and gain I start off with.

using this as a starting point helps me to use less compression.
 
Cross, thanks for the tip. I think I actually understand it. This, I am assuming, is something you use after you have the track recorded? And sonar is set to clipping overflow - I need to go find out what that means now...


Thanks again!

Vice
 
crosstudio said:
here's how i use the RMS and Peak meters as a guide. remember that i've got Sonar set for clipping overflow:

let's say i've got a vocal track and the RMS levels seem to be hanging around -12db while the peak is smacking around -4db.

i'll start off with the threshold set for -12, and the ratio set for 2:1
with the attack set at the fastest time, and the gain set for +4.

now the RMS will be at -8db and any real peaks will hit at -4db.

the larger the difference between the RMS and peak levels, the higher compression ratio and gain I start off with.

using this as a starting point helps me to use less compression.
Click to expand...

couldn't your ears do that too? :p
 
yes this is for mixing not tracking.

and yes my ears are getting better at it too!

but i still use the RMS/Peak approach for compression and the spectrum analyzer (brainspawn) for visualization of EQ.

i use to take a "believe the graphical user interface before you ears" approach, but now i take a "believe your ears over the graphical user interface" approach.
 
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