fader vu-meter 'sensitivity' and peak log

hello everybody,

i found myself yesterday having real problems... i found that the autogain is unreliable when you are constantly switching between quite different music genres, and felt almost as every track i played was providing a different output level, even having the files scanned with the autogain feature enabled. something that may pass unnoticed if someone plays just house, or just techno.. anyway, it was VERY annoying. no, it was not the first time i experienced this, but it's been the time i've decided to speak about it..

the usual way to solve this situation, 'oldschool wise' would be to compare and adjust the gain following the reference visually provided by the fader's vu-meter in a conventional dj mixer.

within traktor's gui, the vu-meters that are alongside the faders, are useless as they are now: they're constantly peaking against the fader 'button' so there's no way to appreciate the difference between tracks, in terms of output level, visually.

so there goes my feature(s) request(s):

1 - give us the chance of setting which scale we want to have displayed in the vu-meter: may the top represent 0db, or +6db, or.. well, sony sound forge is a good example of what i mean, it's preferences menu lets the user choose what scale to show, please check it out. but i would like to see the peaks banging more or less at the middle of the way in the meter, then they'd be useful to visually calibrate the sound level between songs avoiding high or low spikes..

2 - mark with a small white line the highest peak for each track, as it sounds, and keep it for some seconds.

3 - paint the meters! from green to yellow to red.. you know.

well, that's it... as usual, my apologies for my limited english..

thanks & regards.

PS: all this refers to the use of the internal mixer, of course!

 

I agree. We need to have:
1) The entire top of the vu meter visible at all times
2) Traffic light - Green, Orange, Red

 

+1

 

I'm in!
2: What you're looking for is a peak hold function i believe...?

 

yeah, probably

thanks for putting in the right words!

let's see if somebody at development listens to us...

 

YES! Having proper gain meters on the channel strips is an excellent idea.

I've been thinking about requesting this feature for a long time. For DJ's like me who mix everything internally, having this kind of visual information in the software would be very useful. I already put all my mp3's through mp3gain, and wavs through wavgain, which gets the volumes all close to identical. I know that Traktor has an auto-gain feature, but I don't like using it, because I don't always trust the soft-takeover when making gain adjustments - it often results in too many volume spikes and dips. Having proper gain meters though would be excellent!

NI please look at my attached screenshot for an idea of how I think this could work!

I just made a very similar post in another thread about this topic. As a long time Traktor user I'm very keen for this idea to be implemented.

 

matching levels of tracks with the VU meters (traktor or mixer) is not good practice .

for example.

you load your first track and match to 0 db on the vu meters .
the next track you load has been mastered with less compression and will have to go higher on the VU meters to achieve the same perceived volume , say plus 3 db for example.

your visual method/autogain load wont pick this up.

 

True, that's a valid point. But mastering that kind of thing just comes with experience, and understanding what the waveform is telling you.

I think the real issue here is that people just want to be able to gather some REAL information from the vu meters, with regards to clipping and how much digital headroom they do or don't have. If you can rely on accurate readings from your meters, dealing with perceived loudness just becomes a simple matter of recognizing how the meter is responding to the difference between peaks and valleys in the incoming track, and compensating accordingly.

Hell, just looking at the waveform is enough for that aspect. We all know what a super compressed, ultra-hot waveform looks like by now, right?

 

+1

 

+1