Metering PRE fader!!!!! Steinberg c'mon!! we are in 2020!!!

Yes, almost all plugs of emulations, and certainly the good ones. And this is written also in the manual of them

All dynamics plugins are sensitive to input levels, but that has nothing to do with prefader metering. You seem to be confused about why you want it, first mentioning clipping and then changing to plugin input levels, but I can see you are not going to be convinced, so I’ll just leave it at: there is a good reason why you don’t find prefader metering in all other DAWs :slight_smile:.

I quickly checked the manuals from BSS 402 emulation from Waves and the dbx 160 and AMS Neve 88RS emulations from UA
there is no hint to -18dBFS
Where did you get this information from?

We still not understanding. The level of audio signal in the strip channel is correlated to clip in the meaning of If I use 4 or 5 plugins and for ex. Don’t take care of food gain staging, maybe at the out of the last plug I Raise a signal around 0dbfs, and clip. But if the fader is not at unity level with metering post fader I can’t see it until open the Channel.
Pre metering is in all common other daw fronte reaper, to logic, protools, studio one. This is the fact

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Acustica audio, softube, and a lot of others simulations and it has a sense. All of them replicate hardware that has this input signal.

the only reason I can see this needed, is if you’re using an external hardware insert


but if you have gainstaged properly… do you really need to know what the post insert/prefader level is?

Maybe with this video, or similar ones, I can explain better my post and what I mean

after searching through the mess on Acoustica Audio I still have no idea where you get the -18dBFS from…

Softube is prrogramming for UAD as well… only one reference to -18dBFS
the CL 1B VU meter reads 0db at -18dBFS for a sine wave (+3dB peak value)
but this means nothing to the input gain

Okay so he’s talking about what I’m talking about, but you don’t really need pre-fader metering to gainstage properly.

I’ve also really never encountered a plugin that adds gain off the get go, maybe at the most 1db.

Also, you can’t really depend on peak metering for gain matching, what you really want is loudness matching. You’ll notice sometimes a very compressed sound will have a lower peak, but sound louder than the dry.

The video essentially shows rookie mistake, ie, with or without pre-fader metering, he could have and should have already gainstaged properly, so imo, it’s sort of a pointless feature that nobody should need in 2020 given there’s lots of information on the internet about gainstaging properly. Almost every plugin has input and output trims.

He’s even more confused about how DAWs work than you are :slight_smile:.

Dynamics plugins are sensitive to their input levels, but pre-fader metering has nothing to do with plugin input levels. Pre-fader metering tells you about the output level of the plugin chain. To check the input levels of the dynamics plugins, you must use the input meters on those plugins.

after one minute of the video I disagree with him…
it feels like a commercial

if your metering is sitting after the plugins and before the fader it does nothing else than showing you the output of your plugin chain
and if you destroyed your signal already, this doesn’t change anything, you can’t see if the last plugin changes gain or not

there you have the hardware meters instead, since this is the point of failure

Not all hardware has meters, you could use your AD/DA meters, but it would be more convenient to have them in the DAW, but it’s not hard to rig this up properly in Cubase.


I agree with the above though, video doesn’t really make sense. just gainstage each plugin you add properly and then you don’t need pre-fader meters.

Not all hardware has meters, you could use your AD/DA meters, but it would be more convenient to have them in the DAW, but it’s not hard to rig this up properly in Cubase.

that’s what I said… :smiley:
hardware meters on the AD or on the processing device
there both hardware in my opinion… :mrgreen:

my contention is it would be more convenient to have the hardware return meters right there in the DAW channel - but Steinberg could also update the External FX insert to have meters and to compete with S1s Pipeline insert.

We continue misunderstanding, all replyes are out of the meaning of my post.

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Here for example, and in most of others software House

It tells to stay at Unity gain level in input O db analog -18 dbfs digital to obtain the same work as hardware.
Also in the forum of AA are mentine the same things.

But my post is for a different cubase option

I’m failing to see how pre-fader metering would solve this, you’d want to be controlling for these errors ‘before’ getting to a meter. ie, if you have 6 insert plugins, and insert 4 is causing input clipping on insert 5… pre-fader meters aren’t going to help you.

Now, you could argue, that you would be relying on pre-fader meters as you are adding each plugin to make sure the end result output level is the same…but… you could use the current post fader meters at any level to measure that difference… so it’s redundant. is it not?

Yess! This is the reason of my post. Pre fader meter does not help or fix errors, but can see me by a simple view of a cubase mixer, if Any channels in some parts of the song has problem. And then that I fix it opening this channel. With post fader metering faders that are low or around the Middle area can ‘mask’ this.

okay, but, in the instance of plugins in my example - it’s still not going to help you if plugin 4’s output is clipping plugin 5 of which you’ve reduced the output of.

I mean, what you’re talking about would be a pretty massive mistake to be doing that repeatedly to justify adding the meters signal placement you want… and I mean, why would you make your plugins that loud, and then reduce your faders that much… so much so you wouldn’t be able to tell if there are any problems.

It just sounds like sloppy workflow, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not the correct topology of audio engineering.

1.) set your faders to 0db
2.) before adding plugins, gain adjust your events to be at, around or, between -6 and -12. I recommend doing this in 6db increments or decrements as that is a perfect bit and suffers no loss of resolution.
2b.) If you really want to get fancy, use a VU plugin with real RMS ballistics emulation like Klanghelm VUMT and balance everything either with the event trims, or the input channel trim. see here - - - - > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECRx4WF3pcc

3.) Start adding your plugins… and… gain stage them as you go along.

That simple.