I’m havin an issue. This goes for both the Waves VU and TBProaudio mvMeter2. So, I know it must be a Cubase problem and not the plug ins themselves. From what I understand, with the plugins headroom set to “18”, whenever the db VU hits “0 dB” this should equal -18 dB on the dBFS meter, however on my DAW, “0 dBVU = 0 dBFS” and “-18 dBFS = -18 dBVU”.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
From your picture I am not sure about that. In it I can see the meter in Cubase reads more or less -6 dBFS, while the VU meter reads a little less than 0. But: Cubase meter gives you peak value: that is the value you actually have in this very moment. The VU meter gives you (depends on configuration, but presumably in your case) RMS value, and this is a mean value (quadratic mean). So both readings don’t need to be the same, because the measuring is not the same. It could be that you take another picture where the VU meter is still reading 0 dB, but the Cubase meter is reading now -12 dBFS.
I think you are misunderstanding the issue. I am not aiming them to be the same readings. Either way they are more or less the similar readings.
Now, with the VU headroom set to 18 on the plug-in, “0VU” should equal “-18dBFS”. I’ve spoken with Waves, they verified this and sent a screenshot of their DAW to confirm that this is how it is supposed to function. So, 0 VU should not be anywhere near -6dBFS. It should be -18dBFS.
In the attached photo I have -18dBFS to see what the VU read, it read around -18 VU. This makes the plugin function as nothing more than a meter skin.
What type of signal are you measuring? I see Groove Agent is the only track in the project; you definitely won’t see much correlation between dBFS and dBVU with drum hits. A 1kHz sine wave at -18dB is what you want to be using.
VU meters display an average level over a certain period, and that period is much longer than a drum hit. Therefore, loud drum hits won’t move a VU meter nearly as much as they move a peak meter. A sustained sound, though, like a sine wave - that’s when the VU meter and the Peak meter will agree. Feed that VU meter a sine wave at -18dB and it’ll shoot right to 0 and hold there.
It is true I said “both readings don’t need to be the same” but what I meant with that is that you shouldn’t expect that the VU meter reads 0 dB when the Cubase meter reads -18 dBFS when you configure VU meter with 18 dB headroom, because what a VU meter measures is a different thing than what a channel meter in Cubase measures (RMS value versus instant value, respectively).
That here was my point.
