mixing levels

[suprstar]

Yea, it seems useful for the clip signal - but for the numbers?

It's impossible to tell where they're going!

Please tell me I can turn that off too.

Also - another complete noob question, but is this a good way to tell where my signal is peaking during tracking? (with the mixer in cubase)

as I have a terrible Mic - I've just been turning my gain dial on my fasttrack pro all the way up, and - well at least my fast track doesn't tell me I'm clipping, but cubase sure likes to tell me I am when I listen back to it.

There's a LOT of cubase users here, including myself. The input faders tell you exactly what your signals are peaking at. You have a section of channels for all your inputs, (not the channels for your project's tracks) - those are for setting the gains coming into the DAW. THOSE are the level's we're taking about when we say 'shoot for -15 to -12'.

Those are really the only important numbers involved when tracking. Your fasttrack might not be peaking, maybe your faders are really low or something, that's all just monitoring.. Anything besides what your cubase mixer input channels say is irrelevant - when tracking..

 

[Opivy]

It's in the settings.
You can set it to stay on for 3 secs. ,5 secs. , or always on once you hit it.....I like the 3 sec. feature. lets me know that I've hit it then it resets as I make adjustments.

how do I change these settings? I don't see anything about it in the preferences.

 

[suprstar]

Right click on the mixer, go to 'Global Meter Settings' and select Hold Peaks, Hold Forever, Fast Release, etc.

 

[suprstar]

I did some checking, and I know what you're talking about now The 'Hold Forever' and 'Fast Release' only apply to the little tick marks on the the bouncing meters..

Here's a project while it's playing:

If you have 'Hold Forever' selected, those tick marks stay up forever at the highest peak since you last reset them. This pic is a minute after I stopped playing the project:

If 'Fast Release' is selected, the ticks show you the highest peak in the last couple seconds. 10 seconds after I stopped the project with this setting, the ticks are at -∞ without me doing anything at all:

The 2 numbers at the bottom of the track, the larger one is the fader setting. The small one is the highest peak since the last reset. This number never resets until you reset it, no matter what you settings you have. I don't think there's a way to make it behave any differently. And I'm not sure why you'd want to, knowing your peaks is critical, having them reset automatically is only gonna make you miss one!

 

[Opivy]

thanks so much suprstar! You're really helping me understand this - my frustration is being lifted!

I think I'll be leaving hold peaks forever on.

But now for the dumbsest question so far - what are the point of the ticks? If the number represents it - what do these ticks, or even for that matter - the meters do? I mean since there are no numbers on the meters themselves.

 

[suprstar]

It's just a graphical representation of the same thing. Maybe your brain works quicker to scan across the mixer and see what's the highest thing at a glance. The number at the bottom is more detailed - a tick at 'about -4db' could be -4, -3.8, -4.08333, etc..