lets talk about meters

by **rick** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 1:17 am

i have been going meter mad lately , long before stavs infamous vu meter article in AT
long before Robs excellent AT vu meter tech article , you could find me any working day pondering on the various lights ,movements and scopes at my finger tips that bounced in time with the music

this year i have consolidated those thoughts and in the studio on the testbench and in our store room , we have surely got the most serious selection of sound type meters in any studio in the country (err world ..? )

the selection as it stands today in the main studio is about a dozen sifam ( vus - lots of them custom placed all over our console plus some phase versions as well .. ) ntp plasma high resolution bargaphs, the new stand alone dorrough led bargraphs, and we just got two of the sony digital aes standalone bargraphs ,
two different models of retubed and retored NTP lissocopes ( one with a compresser and phase scope and one without ) two klark technic spectrum boxes , and god knows how many software meters are flashing away as well as everything that comes in the hardware boxes , and the apogee uv1000 (x 2) is back at turtlerock showing the last signicant bit peaks in pretty purple lights

in the tech room we have narrowed it down to two siemans megabuck pegal thingos and the newly installed audio precision test set plus just two scopes - greg put everything else back into the storeroom :(

so of course with meters on the brain on the weekend i went to abc auction and bought a used megabuck room acoustic test metering set for next to nothing, 12 more sifam vu meters to put places that i have not thought of yet and Mark has looked at me with a smirk more then once this week as i opened up box after box of things that "test" sound

its all part of the system blueprinting we are doing but i must say the box of the week is a little phonic hand held sound test set . its like a little tech room in a box and tests all kinds of things including a calibrated microphone room spectrum thingy and a reverb rt60 test and does not cost too much ( if mark would leave at the console for long enough for me to learn to drive it i could tell you if its worth the money !)

so all that said , the conclusion i have come to over the years and recently just reverified is a studio is nothing without just the good old set of calibrated vu meters rigged up.
and perhaps everything else is just cream ( for getting you past the 97 % sound quality wall)

how have the newbies ( i am being silly with that name) gotten on learning how to read those meters after the wave of vu meter builds caused by those AT articles ?

do your new VU meters make sense to you six months down the track or is is just something that was learnt by some guys and ignored and not needed by others ?

i remember a few years ago i was talking a tech ( ok it was Rob) into putting some vu meters into a box that probably did not need its own metering for me and i suggested he should make up some buffer vu meter boards so it would be simple to do more , his attitude was "yeah i guess so but having things bounce up and down in time with the music is nice but surely one set on the output enough"

i reckon rob has made more vu meters swing in the last two years then in his entire career so its probably time we checked in on what they actually mean to the new digital studio types

so is vu external metering a fad ? or are sound guys actually going back into the technical side of the business?

btw . howard you are not the only guy to get down and dirty test digital clipping lights i have done it many times before and at christmas when things slow down or i am doing it all over again.

there is a reason turtlerock has the logo it does , but sometimes i feel completely out on my own on the metering issue.

thoughts ...?

btw if you are one of the many forum "lurkers" but never post this is a very safe subject to post on , i am sure i have a pretty good mag article swelling up in my brain but i need to know what the average studio dweeb thinks about metering .
does anybody actually use meters ..? are your ears alone the way you do it ? ( which i suspect is 99% of the case)

by **jkhuri44** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 1:43 am

i've gotten into the whole "engineering" world in the digital age....and am pretty confused as to the purpose of VUs...my thoughts that are seeing the avg program volume is cool....but is sorta pointless when going into a digi platform that will clip straight up at 0dbFS.

does metering with VU's let you "mix" or record to the same perceived volume? because i know i've recorded all sorts of stuff straight to harddisk, and getting something peaking at -3dbFS or so doesnt sound quite the same....

point being, its hell confusing, especially for someone that has never tracked to tape before...or someone thats never done a project completely in the analogue world...i assume VU's were great when people had 6 or so dB to play with on tape, and whatever headroom their mixing desks allowed them to get away with ...i "assume" its alot different today...

by **Linear** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 2:05 am

I am a huge fan of VU meters. From where I'm sitting there are 78 of them on various bits of equipment and to me they are indispensable.

Best meters in my opinion are the large Modutecs found on Ampexes and Otaris. Second are the Sifams.

I'm not 100% up on the theory, but apparently ALOT of effort and thought was put into the original VU meter spec by a bunch of very smart people from Bell Labs in the late 30's. Many VU's manufactured today don't meet this spec, which is unfortunate. You can definitely pick a 'good' VU from a 'not so good' VU.

I'm amazed at how well a good VU meter relates what you can hear with what you can see. Can't be replaced with anything else in my opinion.

Chris

by **Linear** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 2:41 am

i've gotten into the whole "engineering" world in the digital age....and am pretty confused as to the purpose of VUs...my thoughts that are seeing the avg program volume is cool....but is sorta pointless when going into a digi platform that will clip straight up at 0dbFS.

does metering with VU's let you "mix" or record to the same perceived volume? because i know i've recorded all sorts of stuff straight to harddisk, and getting something peaking at -3dbFS or so doesnt sound quite the same....

point being, its hell confusing, especially for someone that has never tracked to tape before...or someone thats never done a project completely in the analogue world...i assume VU's were great when people had 6 or so dB to play with on tape, and whatever headroom their mixing desks allowed them to get away with ...i "assume" its alot different today...

I don't think it's any different. The recording game is still all about gain structure, whether it be digital or analog.

Ideally, you want to be recording as much signal as possible (ie as far away from the noisefloor as possible) whilst keeping a safe margin from the clipping point. If you play around with your gear enough, you learn by trial and error where both points are. I have lots of recordings with either too much hiss/noise, or the occasional clip (or heaven forbid, both).

So setting up gain structure is all about finding that point in between that you're comfortable with. So whether it be analog or digital, I reckon VU meters give you the clearest and most reliable visual reference for finding that point. I often set levels to tape with the monitors off, just using the meters to give my ears a rest.

When I have to record digitally, I still set levels using my tape machines VU's (thank god they're normalled to the console inputs) - on the apogees +4dBu = -16dBfs and using VU's I always manage to get the level exactly where I want it.

Chris

by **heathen** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 8:58 am

I learnt to track to tape, so the vu's were essential for finding the correct level. After I started setting up my own gear ( all digital to start) I started worrying less about rms levels and more about peak levels, stupid thing to do.

Now I am very careful with my levels especially internal gain structure on plugins, individual tracks and stereo outputs during mixdown. The only analog vu's I have are in my pendulum es8 and api 2500, which I don't really watch too often, way too small.

All my other meters I don't trust either, samplitude, internal rme meters, console output meters and apogee stereo meters, they all lie to me, or there are discrepancies between them all.

I though I can't really trust any of them so I mainly just use the samplitude stereo meters for stereo reference level while mixing, I've found the peak meter in samplitude to be workable with my other gear and it shows an rms level simultaneously, though it does not peak the same as the apogee's. sometimes the apogees will show a clip without the software noticing or sometimes vice versa.

The thing I've found most useful is calibrating my monitors, as soon as I did this all my internal gain troubles were gone, I've found a lot of home engineers mix way too quietly thus needing to increase gain way to much on individual tracks and outputs which will almost always guarantee clipping internally.

Turn your monitors up and mark a reference level position and use that all the time, I set them up with a -20 db rms pink noise signal (Which Bob Katz has on his website) which I then tested with a shitty spl meter and set each monitor to 78 db spl, adding the second with test tone running took the stereo pair to 81 db spl.

Was not perfectly done but gets me in comfortable ball park for all internal gain settings to be right without constantly checking them.

Tracking is another story, I'm quite conservative with levels here so I don't clip anything on the way in and don't drive the analog inputs too hard on my converters. I could really use a good vu here.

Summing up my thoughts I believe tacking levels to be the biggest issue for inexperienced engineers, secondly monitor levels which directly relate to internal gain and stereo output levels being way to high.

I do some demo mastering (ok I admitted it) Heathen style (sort of like Homebrand or No Frills). The main issue I get repeatedly is peak stereo levels hovering around zero. First thing I do is turn it down to send to my outboard gear. Every single time they ask "why dja turn it down man" and then I explain why. I'm sick of explaining it so I could absolutely guarantee any pro ME would be totally over it.

I like my mix levels around -3 to -4 dbfs and rms around - 22 to -18 rms, depending on the style of music and loudness potential of the mix.

Another thing is the "I wanna make it super loud", loudness potential is where its at here, some songs have a low potential to be loud and sound good and some have a great potential to be loud and still sound good due to frequency content and dynamics, the arrangement of the song especially is crucial here I believe.

Sorry for the long post but all is relevant in a small studio.

Turn your monitors up!

by **chris p** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:59 am

I'll put my hand up as a newbie inspired by Rob's article and the JLM kit.

As you all know, I built a 2U box of 4 meters showing L, R, L+R (mid) and L-R (side), and calibrated them to 0dbVU = -14dbFS out of my DAW interface. It now sits in my monitoring chain, so I'm a little on Rob's "one set on the output is enough", although I do have another meter set aside for a "gold" channel strip on the drawing boards.

I then spent a lot of time listening to my favourite recordings, and watching what the meters did. From this I learned -

(1) Its not just where the meters move but how they move. Do they gently sway or really bounce around.

(2) Most mixes have a lot of mids compared to the side. That centre pan detent obviously has some effect! (or that complementary things are being panned equally left and right)

(3) I have been recording way too hot - there's not many bars show on the DAW at -14db, whereas I liked my recordings to show nice and visibly (like up around -4db). I was just killing my headroom. I sought of knew this, but having the VU and working to a -14FS = 0 standard was quite instructive: the meters gave me the discipline and the reassurance that level was OK.

(4) The meters really shone when I got my decent set of monitors built. With precise monitoring, what I was hearing was more closely matched to what the meters were showing, whereas my previous sludge monitors tended to smear the message.

The meters have certainly become part of the way I work, but its hard to isolate their impact from the other improvements and general learning going on. Having 4 VU meters glowing nicely doesn't make the mix better, its more one indicator of where a mix is at. Still, a big thumbs up to Rob and Joe for tackling this and making it accessible.

by **mfdu** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 11:37 am

Heathen, you are so right about monitoring levels. i used my measurement tools to determine 80dB on pink noise, ages ago. i have my monitoring volume knob marked accordingly. and i consistently turn it down from there.

i try so hard to maintain dynamics that it really cheeses me off when the client says "hey - isn't there a little room at the top of the meters? can't you run the mix a bit louder?"
i have been practicing stav's "rough mix by numbers" concept, and it works well for me - especially when multitracking with a live stereo mix going straight to 2track tape.

and yes, i have been recording waaaay too hot. i'm working on curbing that.

by the by, i have been using the massey 'tape' plugin, and i love it. it gives greater illusion for less voltage, just like stav encourages us to aim for. watching the VU's and peaks, you can really see the added power of the introduced harmonics.

I love my meters. my TAC has bargraph meters that are switchable b/w peak and "VU" - the VU function ain't like watching the bouncing needle, but gives me a good basis.
my 2-track tape (normalled on console stereo output) has juicy VU's. my 8track has smaller VU's (normalled to the console output busses) with a much faster action.
my 2track digital has a large scale peak which is pretty handy on mixdown.

a lot of the time, when i need to have a proper listen, i turn my computer screen off and rely on my meters - it makes me almost feel like an engineer!!!
but in the box, i always run VU plugs on protools busses and master outputs, so i can smell it all that bit better. i dunno - there's just something about the swing which makes more musical sense.

my collection of hardware (especially my clones - 4 x 1176's, a pair of LA2A's on the way) have nice juicy VU's, to truly show how the compressors are acting on the signal.
i have used capacitors to slow down the reaction-time of the cheaper VU's, to make them seem a bit more natural. they won't be "turtlerock spec", but they're better than nothing!!!

chris
mfdu

by **Ausrock** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 12:45 pm

My S/craft has LED meters on the 8 busses and the Master outputs which seem reasonably reliable but I've been thinking about adding a pair of VUs (from an Otari 5050) to the Master outs.......when I figure out how to do it.

When tracking, my 16 trk Fostex D series has very small LED meters that are at best, only a rough indication of levels whereas the 16 trk 1" has 16 nice VU's which are easy to see from a distance and are a lot more accurate.

by **rob** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:20 pm

good discussion guys...makes a pleasant respite following a crappy week behind the bench

first up...stay tuned for my next article in AT....poor Andy nearly had a brain hemorrhage helping me knock this one into shape. I hope there will be some info about levels of use or interest in it for you.

secondly i dig moving coil meters...not just VU meters...and whilst it is largely an ascetic thing, i had a poignant reminder this week of the value of analogue over digital meters. I've taken possesion of a classic AVO tube tester ( so yes...i can now test / verify and match all your tubes in future jobs )
Being the tech i am, despite this AVO having come straight from refurbishment with a tube guru, i couldn't just accept that it was aligned correctly and wanted to go over it's alignment myself. So, i pull out the alignment info and grab my $300 digital multimeter and start taking measurements. Straight up nothing is making sense...all the readings are so far out of the ballpark that i'm thinking this AVO is knackered. Then the light bulb above the workbench goes on and i realise that in the days this AVO was built digital multimeters didn't exist. What is needed to measure and test this unit is a multimeter from the era of development of these tube testers. So, guess what, I need a multimeter with a moving coil meter. What this gives me over the digital multimeter is the intrinsic averaging of the meter movement itself. My new super accurate digital meter is reading too fast and has no idea how to display a half wave recitifed voltage in a meaningful way.

here's some of my meter collection.....donations gratefully recieved

Rob

by **Roy** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 4:54 pm

by **Kris** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 7:17 pm

SLUT!

by **TimS** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:07 am

I almost bought some Sifam VU's from the UK off Ebay a few weeks back after reading Rob's article.
Also, Stav's advice in his book has also got me thinking about using VU's in a more constructive manner, especially setting up positioning of instruments as well as aiming for the 'greater illusion for less voltage' concept..

Seems like something I really need to insert into my signal path!!
Tim..

by **mark rachelle** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:21 pm

Guys this is a sickness

I suggest you all meditate on nothingness,

no career, and no gear, especially no VU meters

then when you don't want VU meters you will be rewarded with many VU meters

ha

that said

VUs are great

and you can't always trust your ears

(pilots know to calibrate and first trust their instruments over their eyes or risk life due to spacial disorientation, experienced studio boffins know how to stay away from aural fatigue)

and sometimes your ears make the wrong choices so good metering is just another tool to make sure what you are hearing looks right

that said with digital the way it is now does anyone really give a rats ass

if you are a pro engineer / producer do you need great metering in a digital world?
i'd say no way

but if you are a pro mastering engineer great metering is essential IMHO

by **astrovic** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:55 pm

following Robs's fantastic article, and Chris's fantastic summing/metering threads in the DIY section, I've been very keen to get some meters going - primarily as I see metering as an excellent educational tool (in terms of helping me understand what audio "does") and also having a useful function down the track as well.

When you're new to the recording game (small home setup for hobby purposes only), visual aids that help explain what your ears are hearing do wonders. I have found following the meters in my compressors to be invaluable in understanding what I am hearing and translating that understanding into what I am trying to achieve.

Plus I love things that move with the music. I'm sure one of those dancing flower pots would do the trick, but their ballistics are all wrong :P

Chris, good to hear back your findings on your setup.

by **Howard Jones** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 8:23 am

lets talk about meters

lets talk about meters

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