Where is my file hitting 0dB?

Cubase
1

Hi - Just playing around with levels a bit, I put a limiter at -0.2dB on the last group feeding the 2-bus. Doing statistics after rendering I see my max is 0.0 dB on the rendered file. I’m not sure why that is, “inter-sample overages”?, but that’s not the point of this post …

What I’m wondering about is how to tell where the rendered audio track hits 0dB. There are multiple little bits that come up and approach it, I went into the sample editor and the dots are close to 0dB, but I don’t know how to select the dot to see what its actual value is/whether it actually hit 0dB or not.

Even if I could, that sure is a labor intensive way to tell if there is something at 0dB - manually scrolling/zooming/measuring for each dot that might or might not be up at 0dB. It’d be nice if there were a function that allowed me to hit a key and it would bring me to the next 0dB dot, or something like that.

Do I need to get Wavelab or something similar if I want to do that, or can Cubase help me a little bit more than I apparently know? Not that I want to have my tracks this hot in the end, but I do want to learn all the tools available to me in Cubase to help me control the levels as precisely as I can.

Thanks for any thoughts!

2

You could - to a certain extent - do it with the “detect silence” function.

3

Thanks for that, TC. I’m not sure I understand how to apply that function to detecting the parts that might be too loud. Can you “amplify” on that please (sorry, bad pun :smiley: )?

4

That’s a rather neat idea actually. If detect silence has a treshhold value you can set, just set it to the maximum and then incrementally lower it untill a signal is left somewhere, that’d be the highest peak.

5

Thanks for that, nice. Not very efficient for the prob outlined in the OP though I think, as won’t it take forever to go through a project where most of the peaks are right up @ 0dB, w/ potentially many that are just over 0dB?

How do you guys detect your overages?

6

Wavelab - exactly cut out for this type of thing.

7

Found a way to do it for $150, for people that aren’t already using Wavelab:

8

I don’t know for certain but is it possible the EBU R128 meter that C6.5 and C7 use is made by zplane? A zplane folder exists in both Steinberg products. But I didn’t know this company had any stand alone software so this was a good read, thanks.

I think WL7Elements is a better investment at $99.

9

if in doubt , brickwall it ! :laughing:

10

How many people reading this have a true “Peak Meter” (to catch intersample peaks going above 0 dBFS) slapped on their 2-buss output when they are mastering or burning CDs?