wavlab analyser

[har-bal]

thanks earle,
another saturday night in front of the comp

btw, i extracted that file and its giving me an average of -16.41 none of the filters are on and i even tried buning on another pc, still the same though. anyone wanna buy a studio setup?, i give up

So, somewhere in the process you are losing 6dbs. I am up for some professionals in this forum to take a stab at it. Lets see what happens.

Earle

[mflorio]

Have you tried burning the cd in Wavelab ? I always use WL to burn audio cds and Nero only for data cds.

Mike

[elliot]

hey mike

to be honest i cant figure out how to do it in w/l i found the help files very confusing, perhapes yoiu could advise?

[mflorio]

I'm not at my daw now, but I believe it's just File / Create New CD program. I'm on WaveLab 3, so your's might be different if you're on a different version.

Mike

[elliot]

im using 5 but i cant work it out

[dyonisos]

I hope everyone has read the various pages on the web dealing withthe pitfalls of trying to make one's music "too loud". It's the "loudness race". I used to be in that race because I didn't know any better. After doing some reading I'm no longer trying to get -12 dB average RMS before burning to CD. I'm shooting for -15 to -16 dB average RMS these days. The result is retention of dynamics and an overall better sound, not to mention better sound when played over local radio stations. The result of insisting on -12 or lower is someone having to turn down the volume of their system when:

1. switching from watching a movie (VHS or DVD) to listening to a too-loud CD.

The best bet is to figure out the loudest level of a commercially available DVD and then make a point of keeping your audio CD no louder than that.

Just thought I'd add that to the conversation.

[har-bal]

I hope everyone has read the various pages on the web dealing withthe pitfalls of trying to make one's music "too loud". It's the "loudness race". I used to be in that race because I didn't know any better. After doing some reading I'm no longer trying to get -12 dB average RMS before burning to CD. I'm shooting for -15 to -16 dB average RMS these days. The result is retention of dynamics and an overall better sound, not to mention better sound when played over local radio stations. The result of insisting on -12 or lower is someone having to turn down the volume of their system when:

1. switching from watching a movie (VHS or DVD) to listening to a too-loud CD.

The best bet is to figure out the loudest level of a commercially available DVD and then make a point of keeping your audio CD no louder than that.

Just thought I'd add that to the conversation.

You make a good point, however mastering engineers are in now in a terrible dilemma.
Most record labels are demanding loud cd's these days because they are worried about competition.
Heck, even my clients want their music slamming the meters.
The problem is this....you have to give the client what they want or shut down your business.
I get a lot of business from labels and if I send them a cd with an RMS level of -14.00 they will send it back insisting that I make it louder.

The only folks who understand and appreciate dynamics in their music seems to be acoustic, jazz, gospel and classical artists.

Even radio stations are competing for listeners by increasing their output volumes to the edge.

I recently finished a cd for a popular group (no names) and they weren't satisfied until the RMS level was between -9.00 and -10.00.

So what are gonna do

If the client is happy you get to stay in business

Earle

[dyonisos]

I guess it's a matter of waiting it out until everyone comes to their senses and realizes that a competition over loudness should no longer take precedence over the quality of music. Until that time, yes, one has to do what one has to do to stay in business, I won't argue with that!

[har-bal]

I guess it's a matter of waiting it out until everyone comes to their senses and realizes that a competition over loudness should no longer take precedence over the quality of music. Until that time, yes, one has to do what one has to do to stay in business, I won't argue with that!

I am with you waiting with utter anticipation for everyone to come to their senses as well. It will be a great day to hear music that actually has a decent dynamic range again

Earle

[mflorio]

Of course in 10-15 years from now, when a reversal of this louder-is-better philosophy gains mass appeal, labels will be able to release remastered versions of today's music with RESTORED dynamic range (which is what digital was supposed to do in the first place). So maybe the labels do know what they're doing after all ($$$).... Keep all your un-mastered mixes around !!!

Mike

[dbmasters]

Jeezuz, you guys talk like one solid listening level on every piece of music is a bad thing...

[chams]

Has this issue been resolved?
My first crack at har-bal showed the file to be about -10 db RMS after tweaking.
The monitors reflected this.
After recording, the wave analysis in wavelab 5 showed -18 db RMS, and the -eq file was
noticably at that level.

[har-bal]

Has this issue been resolved?
My first crack at har-bal showed the file to be about -10 db RMS after tweaking.
The monitors reflected this.
After recording, the wave analysis in wavelab 5 showed -18 db RMS, and the -eq file was
noticably at that level.

Chams

Which issue are you referring to? Are you referring to the average and peak level at the top of the graph on right hand side of Har-Bal.

Thanks

Earle

[har-bal]

Has this issue been resolved?
My first crack at har-bal showed the file to be about -10 db RMS after tweaking.
The monitors reflected this.
After recording, the wave analysis in wavelab 5 showed -18 db RMS, and the -eq file was
noticably at that level.

Chams

Which issue are you referring to? Are you referring to the average and peak level at the top of the graph on right hand side of Har-Bal.

Thanks

Earle

Chams

They are actual dB levels but not in the sense you are used to. Your more acustomed to the level as portrayed by VU meters but in the spectral domain how strong something appears is a function of its bandwidth and its level. For example, if you take a sine wave and pink noise both of the same power, the levels as displayed by a VU meter will be the same for both signals but in the frequency domain the sine wave will have a large peak that is at a much higher level than the spectrum line representing the pink noise. This is because the power of the signal in the frequency domain is the integral sum of the components across the spectrum. That is the area under the curve (when displayed on linear-linear scale) is the same for the sine wave spectrum and the pink noise spectrum.

If you're lost think of it in this way. You have a balloon of fixed volume and it has a particular overall length. Now squeeze the balloon and what happens to the length? It increases because the volume in the balloon is trying to stay constant and your restricting its width. A similar thing happens with signals in the frequency domain but in this case the width is the "spectral width". A sine has a very small spectral width so the peak level in the spectrum is correspondingly much higher than for a wide bandwidth signal like pink noise. For this reason it isn't very useful to think about the absolute values on the spectrum axis too much cos it is only the area under the curve that has an easily identifiable physical significance. By the way, the reference I used for the dB scale was arbitrarily chosen. In the next release it will be dB referred to a full scale sine wave, which you may or may not find more useful.

Regards,


Paavo.