Audio meters

[Paul Figgiani]

Guy’s

Pull this 1K sine wave (@0dBfs) into FCPx. Play through and watch the meters. Make sure your levels are set to default (0 dB).

https://www.producenewmedia.com/sinewav.zip

Here are the measured results in Bias Peak and Adobe Audition:

[Patrice Freymond]

Also started checking the meters here and found two things I did not expect:

Nice one: if you pull left on the grey border separating the meters form the timeline the meters grow in with and become a very usable display

Not so nice: On top of each track there is a readout for the value the meter reads. Unfortunately this value does not update in real time (I tried with a -12 to -20 step). So it is nice but not usable…

patrice

[Patrice Freymond]

A picture is worth etc.

[James Culbertson]

Though if you click anywhere in the audio meters panel while playing in the timeline the peak readout will reset.

[Patrice Freymond]

So that’s one more mouse operation for a software which, at the moment, is already too much click driven in my opinion…

[Martin Baker]

The meters can show levels above 0dB because internally FCP has mixed sequence audio at 32 bit floating point for as long as I can remember. Just like with floating point precision on images it allows you to push levels above the “maximum” and bring them down later.

For example in FCP7 you could take an audio clip, push the level up to +12db, nest the audio clip and bring the level down by 12dB and it would sound identical to the original. You can do the same by applying 2 gain effects and with compound clips in FCPX.

So there’s no change in the actual levels the meters are showing, just the fact that you can now see those levels over 0dB.

MartinDigital Heaven, London UK Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps———-FinalCutters – For Everything Final Cut Pro