Still Gain Staging Confusion:

On the +3dB Digital meter in preferences are your numbers still set to
3
0
Infinity

A since wave will clip when it moves above -3dB. That’s just it’s nature.
When you click 0dB in the test tone your track should read -3dB peak.

Oh wait. I have my Pan Law set to -3dB. Yours is probably set to Zero.

So you are good now… the meters are acting the way they should. If you set your project to -3dB Pan Law and Meters Global to Post Pan they will register -3dB down on a sine wave but if you hard pan it, the signal will rise that extra 3dB and you will be right at clipping.

So if your Pan Law is 0 then your meters are now acting as they should. They are aligned. If you Pan hard right the signal will not go up. Only the left side will go down.

Yes, your meter looks fine… Now go up to Heinrich’s last post and re-read it several times.
Especially the part about different types of sounds having very drastic meter differences and if you get your VU meters near the 0 you are good, etc…

Two very different types of meters VU vs PEAK and a highly dynamic variety of sounds you are metering. So you have to use your good judgement but your meters are calibrated… at least the VU and the track meters.

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I hope you can see this screenshot with my settings

@TOMOX I edited my post above your meter picture.

But wanted to show you something else.
In Cubase I very simple sample loop playing.

I have that meter in the insert set to VU. It is much faster than the meter in Magneto ii.

So here is what I get.
My PreGain is -7.3
My Track meters are just at the unity 0.00 mark. Fader is set to 0.00
the VUMT meter needle goes from about -7 to +1 and mostly right near -3 to -2
Track Peak is about -7… so my Track looks like |0.00|-7.00|
Magneto VU input basically dances between that mark after -20 and the -10 mark.
Magneto states input is about -9
I can’t get to 0VU on the Magneto meters without clipping.
I can mess around with Magneto and get a hotter output but even then placing another Klanghelm VUMT VU after Magneto it is far more responsive. Much more aligned to what I hear and see on my tracks and way more informative than the magneto meters.

But this track is basic EDM kick loop intro type thing. It’s in GrooveAgentSE named Chill Out Kit 01

You might want to mess around with the VU meter in Supervision. There are a ton of options and you can see the meter react in very different ways.

Try the VU dBFS and look at the options box at upper right. VU, PEAK, RMS click through those and watch what happens. That meter is calibrated to -18dBFS

I think that meter set to VU is what you have been expecting to see.

Thanks so much @Tom_B for all your help. I’ll definitely check that out your last tips in a couple of days (unfortunately I can’t earlier since I need to travel). I much appreciate your help - I’ve learned a bunch today!

In the Supervision plug-in, I see something called Max RMS. Can this be used to gain stage at approx -18? The word Max has me wondering, because I thought the whole RMS idea was to arrive at an “average,” not a “Max.”

Any help?

Hi Barryjam,
RMS is indeed a kind of “local average”. The Max RMS is simply the maximum value of this “local average” that was encountered during the measurement.