VU Meters no longer working with new Audiophile sound card

pchorman

pchorman

New member
Just installed an Audiophile 2496 and noticed I can't trust my VU levels any longer using Cool Edit Lite. I can drive it well past 0 dB without any signs of clipping. I'm using the same bit depth and sample rate as before with the original SB card. Is this good, bad or just misleading?

Thanks much.

oh, and if I cross-post this elsewhere pardon my desparation for an explanation.
 
Is This The -10dBu/+4dBV Issue?

Going between "balanced" & "unbalanced" inputs/outputs, you are going to see an 11.8dB difference.

I had this issue when I ran some old Behringer mixers with "unbalanced" 2-pin cabling to a standard amplifier. The preamp automatically would be 11.8dB lower than expected.

Inputs will behave similarly on some cards.
 
You can push into the clipping zone with cool edit. It doesn't clip, it does some form of limitting though. Just keep most of your dynamics bellow 0db and it'll be ok.
 
Scott, that's not what Syntrillium and my experience say. Syntrillium say to keep the meter out of the clip zone. On my previous project, I allowed the occasional clip through, and people with better monitors than mine reported that they can hear the distortion.

These days, if it goes into the red, I dump the track and redo it.
 
Going Beyond Clip...

I have had times where I went above *clip* and was able to recover. I don't like to do it, but sometimes get there. Here is what I found (with CEP v1.2a)...

I record in 24.8-bit or 32-bit, and the gain is up enough to ride close to the *zero* line. The vocalist/instument belts out a little louder than expected, and I get peak over what I expected.
If I go immediately into the Amplify menu and let CEP *Calculate* the peak level, I get a reduced signal that isn't clipped.
If I save the file without calculating a new amplitude and reopen it later, the peaks are gone forever.

This doesn't cover the other issues of distortions in the equipment due to the over-drives that may have occured. And, I do insist that one endeavor to AVOID CLIPPING. But, I know that things happen...
 
well that's interesting. however, I used to clip audibly with the SB soundcard, and now I don't with the Audiophile, all other factors remaining the same.

I thought the Audiophile 2496 accepted consumer line-level signals, so I hope it's not the -10 dB/4 dB issue.
 
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