Qu-Drive Recording Level?

[StonepianoParticipant]

Right, those kinds of levels occurred only because I thought what I was seeing on the metering were the the actual levels going into the hard drive. In my opinion, you should get what you see. But no.

[StonepianoParticipant]

Right, those kinds of levels occurred only because I thought the metering would reflect the actual levels going into the hard drive (because it’s the qu-drive metering!) I think you should get what you see. Turned out not to be the case.

[mervakaParticipant]

You get what you see, but you won’t get positive dBFS levels. The reference is the absolute maximum value (and hence full scale). That’s why -18dBFS was picked, to give a reference relative to a working level chosen by the manufacturer. If you want dBFS, subtract 18.

I ask that you do your homework rather than get frustrated and blame the tools. They work just fine.

[StonepianoParticipant]

-18 is more or less a universal reference with console manufacturers. What I am trying to put across here, is:
What is the the point in having a metering display that doesn’t give you instant information on what is actually going on? Besides, I’ve been hitting zero, getting below -30 levels, your arithmetic does not work, and neither does the metering. You can go on defending badly implemented functions, I want to know what is happening, without a pocket calculator.

[StonepianoParticipant]

It is going to be interesting to see what kinds of levels will be displayed, after I’ve visited the routing menus, and trimmed everything up 10dBs… which of course adds up to around -25dBs, well below 18.

You have never been helpful with any of my issues, so save your breath.

[StonepianoParticipant]

P.S. The community-site is bugging like crazy (again), at least on an iPad. Grrrr

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

If you’ve been hitting zero then you have big problems in your gain structure. I’ll have a look at my QU this weekend, and check on my recording levels..

But given that the noise floor in a 24bit recording is somewhere down below silly it’s not something I’d sweat – if I have to boost the audio by even 40 or 50 dB in the post production then that’s fine. 24 bits is insanely deep in terms of dither noise…

[StonepianoParticipant]

Well, my kick drum might peak at -5/-3 on the Qu-drive metering (I have a steady foot). I am using insert sends because I do all my processing in the DAW. I just don’t understand why I should do gain trimming somewhere else than the actual channel-preamp? “Plug & Play Recording”, right? Would be logical to think that once you have your preamp gains set, inserts would send that level, post preamp to the hard drive, and the Qu-Drive metering should reflect that. I don’t worry about S/N ratio, just puzzled by the fact that the track levels show up so low at the DAW. I’ll just go ahead and normalize, rather than end up with a messy gain structure in the DAW.

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

Qu-Drive metering – what’s the scale (I don’t have mine to hand at the moment)

I’d have thought that you’d want Direct Out, not Insert send…

[StonepianoParticipant]

As I´ve nagged before, all metering screens on the Qus are laid out inefficiently. There is a lot of empty space on screen, that could have been used to accommodate bigger and clearer meter bars. But I suppose the Qu-Drive meters have the same scale as the main meters, which are showing a range from something like -30 to “over” (probably) 3dB over zero. The Qu-Drive meters are tiny, but you can sort of guess from the scale where zero is. And they probably turn red at an over.

The reason I´m using insert points for recording is, that I´m not using the Qu as a DAW-controller, I take the hard drive home from our rehearsal studio, and do all my mixing at my home workstation. I don´t need any Qu-processing for my tracks.

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

You cannot, and I mean CANNOT, get a positive dbFS reading.

Any positive labels are not dbFS, they may well be reading 10 dB up to make the desk feel more analogue…

[StonepianoParticipant]

I understand that, but the metering goes beyond zero, nevertheless. If only to show overs. They are kind of hard to read, I´ve just been avoiding any red indications…

[DavidCoParticipant]

Hi Stonepiano,

Which meters do you mean, exactly? On all meters (except gain reduction meters), the amber/green division is your 0dB (-18dBFS) point. The metering measures peak, so your RMS value will appear somewhere below, depending on the material being recorded. Perhaps this is your issue?

How are you measuring your readings from the recording? Are you observing playback metering peak dB, or visually inspecting the waveform against a dB scale?

DC

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

So the metering isn’t dBFS – that’s not surprising – most people in the industry are used to having positive dB values available, and so most of the digital manufacturers allow their metering and labels to “go to 11”, despite 11 actually having no meaning (11 is the new 10) – because it makes life easier for users coming from the analogue world.

When you then look at the resultant file in a DAW, which is much more likely to show dBFS, then the offset used to provide this “friendly” metering is revealed. I suspect that this is what you are seeing, normalisation as the first stage of post production isn’t going to adversely affect the signal, although it is probably not all that useful – you can just change levels as you mix…

The important thing is not dbFS level, but noise floor and distortion.

[StonepianoParticipant]

@DC: I’ve been relying on the per channel PFL- readings, since other metering, whether main input/QuDrive meters are nothing short of useless. Logic definitely has a dBFS- scale, so that is what I’m looking at for the final product.

“Yes,no, who knows, I don’t know…” (Jimmy Buffett)

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