I disagree with both. First, using a VU meter has absolutely nothing to do with transients, and second, VU meters (both digital and analog) are quite useful in measuring the average because of their scale ratio!

 

Aha. So the reaction time of a meter does have nothing to do with capturing the transients of an audio signal?
You want to measure the average? Why?

 

But you do know what happens when you oversample, right? To determine the TP, the material is oversampled, then filtered, and then the absolutes are measured. If this process is not done in a floating point calculation, the material is shifted by 2 bits before and after the process, but this is rarely the case nowadays.

 

And what's with the intersample peaks in the oversampled file?

Ok, seriously, I didn't know that, that went beyond my theoretical knowledge. Great info (now I finally know what educated sound engineers are good for ).

 

The integration time of a VU meter is not able to measure transients. It is simply too slow and it is not designed to do so.

Microdynamics is not the only thing that interests me when mixing. In fact, the peak is secondary for me. Just a thing I have to take care of to avoid distortion. The macrodynamics are much more interesting. In fact, I mix with LUFS meters. However, since LUFS meters usually have a linear scale ratio and VU meters have a logarithmic one, with a high scale resolution at 0VU, a VU meter is great for balancing macrodynamics in recordings. During editing for example...

 

no one is mentioning that a real VU meter does not have a flat frequency response

 

It is described in detail in ITU-R BS.1770.
The aspects that are not described in detail there, such as the negative side spectrum, have already been discussed here and can be further studied here.

LOL

 

Last edited: Sep 17, 2021

What do you mean by "not flat"? Rather the opposite is the case AFAIK. The frequency response of a VU meter is very flat! In the very low sub-frequency range are problems with the accuracy, but this is due to the integration time of 300ms.

 

the question is if you really want custom ballistics, or if it is not eventually better to work with the 2-3 most common standards.

 

You don't. Just gain stage with ears. Who gives a shit.

Would you trust a VU meter over your ears while gain staging? I have to admit though they look really f***** sexy.

 

Yes I can see why, I was a bit lacking in explanation - Basically it's like anything in life. If it feels good, smells good, tastes good or in this case, sounds good, if it is perfectly correct to every technical specification known that's great. However, if it fulfils every need it does not matter if it defies every rule known to man. I think it's great to have a set of guidelines to follow. While you are likely not one of them, the amount of 'audio engineers' who refuse to shift because they know something is correct instead of worrying about how good it actually sounds, these days, is a trite too many. In context, if a mixer decides to rely on the VU meter instead of a TP meter and it sounds great, it really does not matter how correct his or her mix is, it sounds good, even if they fluked it. I am sure equally, that there are mixes using true peaks and LUFS correctly which you have kind of said in another part that sounds not so good too.

Of course! I simply illustrated that it was not done by someone who wasn't.

There's an interesting article by Bob Katz here on the Loudness Wars. I am sure you'll get something from it however minor or major (Sorry for the musical pun).
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war

Now this one I bow to you. Good on you

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 18, 2021

I love it when I don't actually have to weigh-in, and can just be like "This guy!! This guy gets it!!"

 

I already had a look at it but the very mathematical first part kept from reading it through. The basic TP part isn't that complicated as I found out this time.

 

Meters are just tools nothing more, nothing less. Like compressors, EQs or instruments. We determine what to do with them, not the other way around.

I effin' hate it. It ruinied music since it's beginning.

I had a good laugh about the title some three years ago, I think. It isn't even over now.

 

Last edited: Sep 18, 2021

I use it for gain stating and volume balancing. I don't like to touch faders when adjusting levels for channels.

 

he says as much and the links like Sinus' are there too in more depth at the bottom. You need time to read it and I suppose you do not have a lot. It's a very good article.

Gold star, my point, better put

 

Neither does human hearing, though.

 

it is hard to answer that with "yes" or "no".

in real life situations you usually want to fullfill certain industry specs, just as you want to do that when going A/D or D/A, and you also often want to work with project B comparable to what you did in project A.

however, to do gain staging as such, you should not need any visual feedback for that. you also should not need to see where the cursor is in the sequencer, which is why cubase has that wonderful "ears only" option since version 2.0 for atari.

 

they measure power, and that is mostly done using RMS (though there are other methods to measure power, which lead to slightly different results)...

...but there is a major difference between power and VU meters and that is that in a VU meter there is a slew limiter with different up and down times which "shapes" the curve.

[/quote]
Whereas a peak meter is "we shaved -3dB off the transients".

 

Oh fuck no. Ears are fantastic tools (*grin*) but our ears are really bad at things like subsonic rumbles and DC offset which can fuck up several processes.

So if you can spot those then maybe you don't need visuals, but I can't so I do rely on fancy displays here.