Cockos Incorporated Forums - View Single Post - When does -18 DB matter

JSMastering · 12-20-2018, 08:54 AM

Faders aren't supposed to be at -18. The levels are.

It matters for analog-modeled plugins that use that as a reference level and analog gear that uses that as a reference level, typically things that emulate tubes, transformers, or discrete circuitry....they all behave in ways that changed based on your signal's relationship to a reference level. Being wildly away from it makes them perform wildly different from the designers' intentions.

Pretty much everything else modern uses floating point processing that doesn't care about reference levels.

But, as another consequence of floating point processing, it will never harm your audio to use it. So, when in doubt, you might as well have RMS/VU meters hovering around that level on average and let the peaks go wherever they go (as long as you're not unintentionally clipping a plugin or something).

12-20-2018, 08:54 AM	#7
JSMastering Human being with feelings Join Date: Aug 2018 Posts: 212	Faders aren't supposed to be at -18. The levels are. It matters for analog-modeled plugins that use that as a reference level and analog gear that uses that as a reference level, typically things that emulate tubes, transformers, or discrete circuitry....they all behave in ways that changed based on your signal's relationship to a reference level. Being wildly away from it makes them perform wildly different from the designers' intentions. Pretty much everything else modern uses floating point processing that doesn't care about reference levels. But, as another consequence of floating point processing, it will never harm your audio to use it. So, when in doubt, you might as well have RMS/VU meters hovering around that level on average and let the peaks go wherever they go (as long as you're not unintentionally clipping a plugin or something).