Peak difference's between Flower Audio Loudness Meter and Selig Gain?

[EthicistBeats]

Hey Reason Talk, i was in Reason last night experimenting/recording some talk back tracks last night and i noticed that the flower audio and selig gain were reading different peak dB's. I'm not sure if i have the file still to show you what i mean. But the Flower audio loudness meter was reading around -7dB [no mater if it was in Perceived or RMS mode] while the selig gain was reading -9db.

So my question is, What's the difference in how these devices "read" audio peaks? i like the flower audio because it has a tenth of a thousandth dB reading so i can level match to a tenth of a dB, and the Selig Gain is an indispensable tool, imo.But which peak reading should i "trust" more, [really it doesn't matter as long as im not clipping, i mainly read meters to level match during compression and eq, and i know i can do that with the big meters but i like to match levels exactly so "nothing louder sounds better" but anyways...]

Im not sure if Flower Audio is on the forums to explain, but im pretty sure selig will explain his side [hopefully] ...

Peace.

[selig]

I can say this - Selig Gain "agrees" 100% with Reason's Peak Meter (Big Meter in Peak or VU + Peak Mode). Did you compare Flower Audio to the Big Meter in Peak mode?

Curious what application level matching to a tenth of a dB comes in handy for? I have found when level matching to compensate for processing that levels of within a dB or two are more than accurate enough when talking about peak levels, FWIW.

[Ostermilk]

Flower LM returns the max peak within the selected time window (e.g a during minimum time span of 400ms) wheras selig gain and Reason's peak meters are continually updating.

Simply put I wouldn't be using the Flower meter for measuring transient peaks rather as a guide to check maximum peak levels to ensure that you are not going over. Reason's built in meters and indeed Selig Gain are both better for continuous monitoring of peaks. Flower LM is very useful however usually with a longer time window to check RMS or Perceived Loudness levels and like I said to keep an eye on those maximum peaks.

So you can rely on both of them but bear in mind that LFM's readouts will update every period dictated by the time window so they may not concur with the realtime peak levels at any given moment whereas the Big meter set to show peaks will reflect what is happening as it happens.

So basically if you think of Flower's Peak reading as a "Peak Hold over the time window you specify" and If you could sync that time window with another devices Peak Hold meter's time window only then would you get identical readings.

That's why it's called a Loudness meter and not a Peak meter as it shows an average loudness (Percieved or RMS) against maximum peak levels whilst indicating if at any point you've got overs or how much headroom you still have. For that purpose I find the 3 second interval the most useful and least confusing.

I also only tend to use the Flower meter AFTER a final maximiser just to make sure I'm not pushing too hard on the Perceived or RMS loudness levels and I'm not wasting unecessary headroom after I turn the maximiser on and for keeping an eye on my mix loudnesss before I turn it on.

HTH

[EthicistBeats]

I can say this - Selig Gain "agrees" 100% with Reason's Peak Meter (Big Meter in Peak or VU + Peak Mode). Did you compare Flower Audio to the Big Meter in Peak mode?

Curious what application level matching to a tenth of a dB comes in handy for? I have found when level matching to compensate for processing that levels of within a dB or two are more than accurate enough when talking about peak levels, FWIW.

No i didn't check Flower audio to the big meter, i saved some files [not sure if it's the file i'm thinking of] but i'll open them and hopefully have that answer.

Honestly, i guess nothing lol. I figured that matching signals pre and post processing exactly to the tenth dB would minimize any psychoacoustic differentiations, thus not falling into the "oh its louder and thus better"-thinking. But i guess, i don't need to be as anal about dB's....

[EthicistBeats]

Flower LM returns the max peak within the selected time window (e.g a during minimum time span of 400ms) wheras selig gain and Reason's peak meters are continually updating.

Simply put I wouldn't be using the Flower meter for measuring transient peaks rather as a guide to check maximum peak levels to ensure that you are not going over. Reason's built in meters and indeed Selig Gain are both better for continuous monitoring of peaks. Flower LM is very useful however usually with a longer time window to check RMS or Perceived Loudness levels and like I said to keep an eye on those maximum peaks.

So you can rely on both of them but bear in mind that LFM's readouts will update every period dictated by the time window so they may not concur with the realtime peak levels at any given moment whereas the Big meter set to show peaks will reflect what is happening as it happens.

So basically if you think of Flower's Peak reading as a "Peak Hold over the time window you specify" and If you could sync that time window with another devices Peak Hold meter's time window only then would you get identical readings.

That's why it's called a Loudness meter and not a Peak meter as it shows an average loudness (Percieved or RMS) against maximum peak levels whilst indicating if at any point you've got overs or how much headroom you still have. For that purpose I find the 3 second interval the most useful and least confusing.

I also only tend to use the Flower meter AFTER a final maximiser just to make sure I'm not pushing too hard on the Perceived or RMS loudness levels and I'm not wasting unecessary headroom after I turn the maximiser on and for keeping an eye on my mix loudnesss before I turn it on.

HTH

I still don't see how flower audio would have a louder "average" maximum peak [over time]. Average, by definition would mean less, right?

But anyways, that does help, i think i forgot that flower audio is a "loudness meter", per se, and not just a "peak meter", per se. Thanks.

[Ostermilk]

I still don't see how flower audio would have a louder "average" maximum peak [over time]. Average, by definition would mean less, right?

The 'Peak' readouts do not show the average maximum peak, they show the MAXIMUM peak from within each time window.

So if you have the time window set to 3 s the meter will be showing the maximum peak reached during the last 3 seconds and will update to show the maximum peak after the next 3 seconds and so on. Which is why if you set the time window to 400ms the meter will update more often but again just to show the maximum peak reached during each 400ms time division.

Here you go for a better comparison setup the Big Meter to Peak mode, set the Peak Hold time to 5 second intervals, setup Flower to a 5 second time window and by and large the Flower's Peak readouts will roughly correspond to the Peak Hold blocks (the blocks that briefly get stuck at the top of the meter) on the Big Meter. I say roughly because the 5 second time intervals will not be exactly in sync with each other time wise.

Does that make more sense?

[Ostermilk]

Just checking this with a continuous tone set at -0.4 show as -0.4 on the Flower meter and shows 0 on the Big Meter, whereas a constant level of -0.6 again shows accurately as -0.6 on the Flower meter and is correctly rounded down to -1 db on the Big Meter's peak hold function.

So Selig's meters are accurate, Reason's meters are accurate and Flower's readouts are accurate too. You just have to work out what it is you're looking at.

How cool is that?

[EthicistBeats]

Ok yea I got it. Thanks for that. I'll come back to this when I have my reason open , currently on my phone. Thanks again. Peace.