Understanding Reapers Master meter

[cudarftj]

Hello all, haven't been on in quite some time.

I'm confused about the Reaper meters and what it all means especially the master meter. I tried to look in the manuals index for anything meter and I couldn't finds anything. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong area. If someone could point me in the right direction for information about the Reaper meters It would be much appreciated.

I notice on the master meter there is green meter lines on the outside and in the middle you have your orange and red. I do realize that red is not so good. What is confusing to me is the green will be at or around zero and the inside meters will be much higher. I just want to understand how to read this so I can make improvements on mixing and recording the actual sound.

So anyone who can shed some light on this or refer me to spots in the manual please do.

[fluff191]

I always assumed the green was the input coming into it and the large (main) meters were what was going out of it. Never seen any explanation though.

Oh and red is the MIDI? I think?

[cudarftj]

Originally Posted by fluff191

I always assumed the green was the input coming into it and the large (main) meters were what was going out of it. Never seen any explanation though.

Oh and red is the MIDI? I think?

Well if that is the case then I'm running my track faders way to high. My inside meters are always in the orange to red level. However my track fades are always mixed to -6 as my peaks. I don't usually here any audible distortion though.

[planetnine]

Peak levels and RMS levels.

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[cudarftj]

Originally Posted by planetnine

Peak levels and RMS levels.

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Could you please give me a brief explaination of both without getting to technical if possible.

[Megabass]

Originally Posted by cudarftj

Could you please give me a brief explaination of both without getting to technical if possible.

Peak meter is the FAST meter that quickly showing the biggest values of signal to prevent digital distortion when signal overflows 0 dB. In REAPER`s case you will see red `peak` flashes when signal reaches 0 dB, but not when the signal really overdriven.

RMS meter is the SLOW meter which shows you a constant power of your track or mix. Load your favourite, best sounding song and look at the values of RMS meter. Your best mix may generate similar values.

For further information check here: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=72162

[planetnine]

Peak tells you how "hot" your signals are, and are important to watch for headroom reasons.

RMS (root mean square, a Maths way of averaging an alternating signal) gives you an idea of the power in a waveform and is more directly related to its perceived loudness than peak.

Watch the two meters for different kinds of sounds: peaky, spikey sound will twitch the peak meters more than the RMS ones; fat sounds will move the RMS meters nearly as much as the peaks.

Hope this is helpful...

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[cudarftj]

Originally Posted by Megabass

Peak meter is the FAST meter that quickly showing the biggest values of signal to prevent digital distortion when signal overflows 0 dB. In REAPER`s case you will see red `peak` flashes when signal reaches 0 dB, but not when the signal really overdriven.

RMS meter is the SLOW meter which shows you a constant power of your track or mix. Load your favourite, best sounding song and look at the values of RMS meter. Your best mix may generate similar values.

For further information check here: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=72162

Thanks for the link megabass. I thank all of you for giving me a clearer understanding between the two.

I have another question though. Is there a setting in Reaper to change your individual track meters from pre fader to post fader? I used to have a Korg D-1600 that would let you do that.

[Megabass]

I use this:
http://www.sonalksis.com/freeg.htm
for advanced pre-fx metering and basic gain purposes.

[cudarftj]

Originally Posted by Megabass

I use this:
http://www.sonalksis.com/freeg.htm
for advanced pre-fx metering and basic gain purposes.

Cool ! Thanks for the link. Question? Do you use that meter for all your tracks as well as your master? How do you like it?

What looks like a nice feature to me is the separate readouts for Peak and RMS Left or right. With that it would seem hard to overdive the master fader. I'm gonna give it a try.

Kudos Megabass!

[Megabass]

I use it everywhere I want. It`s like a part of my virtual channel strip or master bus.
I made a track template with FreeG instance in the beginning of the chain.
Using FreeG for me is the most flexible way to have ultimate metering and gain maganement in any point of the chain.
And it`s free)

[cinematree]

Does anyone know why if I put a Limiter that limits everything above 0db, do I still see the Master meter go over 0db? Is the meter pre-plugins? Is it possible to set the master meter to be post-plugins, post-fader?

[amagalma]

The meter is post everything. If you see clipping it can mean two things. Either your limiter is not working, or your master fader is too high.

[cinematree]

Thank you for the quick reply. Ahhh, I had the RMS meters on but not the Peak. If I put on just the peak, the peaks stay below 0db. Awesome. And just found on another thread that "the reaper rms meter is set so that -14db rms shows up at the same level as 0 on the peak meter." Does that sound right? So if the RMS meters go above 0 here and there, that's not a big deal. I'm sure it depends on genre, but for Rock music, as a general rule for just getting in the ballpark on demos, I should prob aim in the area of 0db for RMS on the Reaper meters. Does that sound about right?