As an old skooler, getting up to speed in 8.5, I am suprised to find that meters no longer have a red zone. If I go to Prefs/Metering/Appearence, I see mostly turquoise with some yellow at the top. Of course this is customisable, but why a default with no red zone?
I suspect the metering has changed from an engineering perspective
Hi,
It depends what scale do you use. On the Digital Scale (the default one), there is the Red color only on the top, which makes sense. The signal is not distorted before. If you select any other scale, you will see the red zone on top.
Well, here there is no red at all. Is there a typo above Martin?
Z
I mean there is read only, if you are over the digital 0.
Why not? There is no law about which colours for which level.
Yes being: They liked it better this way, and as you said, it’s costumizable.
I think you mean ‘red’ only. I can see no red anywhere here (in metering appearance).
Even when loading a default preset.
Is there no digital clipping any more in C8.5?
Peculiar
Z
I see, I got your point now.
You are right, in the Preferences > Metering > Appearance, there is no red color at all. You cannot set this color by your own. Also in the MixConsole, you cannot see a red color, when the track is clipping.
Where I can see the red color is in the “Control Room” > Meter > Master. In fact, it’s the same red indicator, which is in the Transport Panel.
Thank you Martin this is interesting.
In Prefs/Metering/Appearence you can set colours. Just click on the small colours.
This is a rabbit warren - metering can be this way.
There are many meters and many scales formeters
I did a test, as far as I can see changes in the colour seem to be confined to the mixer, the small vdus in the project track, and the channel settings dialog.
This is beginning to make sense, but why do Steinberg make the default setting so that hs no red? Surely this leads their users to believe three is no clipping, but is that so, is there no more digital clipping in the mixer? Does the software just prevent this? I can’t hear any clipping here at fader max, but this might just be my setup. Can you take some MIDI tracks and max them see if you get clipping?
There are two colour charts one for the "master’’ and the other for channel meters. You can set colours for both. Page 1111 of the manual.
Now, it does seem to me that this is more useful than it first appears. You could set colours for relevant DBs - as they relate to common sounds. This would make the meters more intuitive.
Yes, basically it is so inside Cubase.
Apart from that, it is not the colours that show clipping, but the sample on the level meter.
Yes this is exactly what I’ve done for a while now, my meters are green up to -18db where they turn light blue, then fade above that, touching the blue zone (oh er matron) is where I aim when tracking and setting initial volume, this way I never have to touch the master fader and maybe it’s psychological, but my mixes sound much better for it. They also generally end up being about -4db without me doing anything - perfect for pre-mastering.
Previously (coming from the 4/8/16 track tape world) I used to track too hot and then fight the master fader throughout the mixing stage - messy and time consuming.
On the screenshot I cranked the gain up on the drum track just to show the colours.
