• Registered: 2007-05-03
  • Posts: 70

Topic: Some questions about Level Meters

Hi!
I am using DC's level meters to analyse the levels of some files, after noticing the Ovr indication in the Totalmixer.
It's a great tool, especially when using the OVS mode, thank you very much for it!

Now, my questions:
1) In the level meter setup dialog, when I try to change the Top Level, it indicates that the valid values are -80 ... 20dB, while in the help it says that the valid values are -80 ... 0dB, and, in reality, the valid values are -80 ... 3dB. Which of them is correct?

2) The Warning Level is when the color changes from yellow to red, but this only happens bellow 0.0dB. When the meter is >= 0.0dB the color is alway white. I believe that 0.0dB is still a good value, that only 0.1dB is really overloading, but since it's always white for >= 0.0dB we cannot watch it correctly.

I'm using DC 5.23 and have a FF400.

Best Regards.

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 24,823

Re: Some questions about Level Meters

The settings are not available in all modes at all times. To be able to change the Top Level to +20 simply reduce the Reference Level to -20.

0.0 dB is a level that is nearly never happening in real life. It is either below or over 0.0. Only with a typical test signal you can exactly reach 0. Basically you are right, the level should not become white at 0.0, but above that. We will try to change that. BUT: With real world signals you will not see any difference. Internally the levels are not calculated in 0.1 dB steps, they are just shown like that. So any fraction of a dB above 0 will give white again...

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

3 Reply by yesgrey (edited by yesgrey3 2009-10-12 23:33:57)

  • Registered: 2007-05-03
  • Posts: 70

Re: Some questions about Level Meters

MC wrote:

The settings are not available in all modes at all times. To be able to change the Top Level to +20 simply reduce the Reference Level to -20.

But why not allow it in all modes? In the music example you give in the manual it reaches +3.5dB, and we could only watch the bar stop at 3dB... Yes, I know that the value on top is unlimited, but is there any technical reason for limiting the bar to +3dB?

MC wrote:

Basically you are right, the level should not become white at 0.0, but above that. We will try to change that.

So, from your description, it seems that each value is the mathematical rounding to it, e.g., 0.0 means ]-0.05,0.05[, 0.1 means [0.05,0.15[, etc... is this correct?
In this case, I think it would be preferable that the values indicated are the top values of the bands, instead of the mathematical rounded values... like: 0.0 means ]-0.1, 0.0]; 0.1 means ]0.0, 0.1], etc...

This is not a big issue, it's importance is only relevant at the frontier level of 0.0dB, the last valid digital value.

Thanks for answering my questions.