I just played a mix and I’m trying to understand the meter readings on Cubase Pro 10. It’s set to digital scale. I played back the mix and the RMS Max was -22 and the Peak Max was -11. Not sure what I should be aiming for. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Depends on your target media.
Some examples:
YouTube: -13 LUFS
AppleMusic: -16 LUFS
Movies and Commercials: -23 LUFS
CDs: -9 LUFS
Peak should be almost maxed out, maybe with a small “safe headroom” of 0.3 to 1.0dB. So to put it the other way round, if you want to produce for a CD the peak should be at -0.3dB as a common value and the short-term LUFS at about -9 LUFS.
I know you talked about RMS, but RMS is unweigthed, everybody uses LUFS nowadays, you should also start using it. Cubase Pro has a LUFS meter, but most recent plugins measure in LUFS as well.