Better VU meter soon?

Cantabile
#1

I know the matter is already under evaluation.
After three gigs with two different bands I can say that C3 is rock solid and gives extremely high performance. Nothing is impossible, every specification can be satisfied, just need some care and study.
Guides and videos are detailed, people here are tremendously helpful.

The only thing missing to me is a strong level checking. Bars showing signal volumes are not long enough.
Using a full VST audio chain on stage needs extreme care and attention.
I should need a led bar long like a full screen, for every rack or plugin used and the sum as main audio output.
Brad wrote he is working on that, I think it should be top priority after VST3 and preset management.

What about a mixer screen with long and color volume bars?

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#2

Is that a good way to level the sounds? Looking at the VU Meter?

I personally don’t care much about it. The current level meter is enough for me to see if there is any output and if it’s clipping. These two informations are enough in most cases. The rest is up to my ears. If something is too loud or not loud enough I adjust it.

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#3

Just my personal opinion.
Current level meter is too little. I would like to know if I am reaching 0 dB and how far.
During live playing sometimes I need more punch and mixer guy tells me I am already too high.
I would like to see a led meter with memory if I am going overload.
Mixer in Reaper for example, allows better checking

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#4

A better level meter doesn’t solve it I guess. It sounds like you give to little volume during soundcheck and turn it up during the gig. 0db in Cantabile doesn’t mean 0db at the FOH or monitor place. This is relative. If your audio interface outputs only +10dbu which I saw on a few you are quieter than with an audio interface that outputs +16dbu even though cantabile shows you 0db…

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#5

Did you know that cantabile gives you the audio meter as binding source (though converts it to midi CC)? So if cantabile doesn’t give what you are looking for you might can use this to solve it for you.

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#6

Good hint.
During soundcheck I could ask to FOH with a continuous sound at - 3dB on C3, how much the FOH mixer reads.
Then setting a reference on C3, I could check all of my songs setup.
I hardly see how to do that with current level meter.
Before two months ago I was playing live using Reaper as VST host.
I had much more information using levels there, and I used this info with the FOH guy

#7

See this link. I use the Klanghelm Vu meters, also.

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#8

I’d welcome much better level metering too. The built-in meters are ok as a very rough guide of relative level, but not really useful for detailed level setting. Really, something quite a bit bigger, and with calibrated markings on would be great.

Also the argument that you should just use your ears isn’t sufficient for me - I find that if I just use my ears when setting up songs at home, some of the levels are way too loud or quiet once I’m rehearsing with the band.

I use traKmeter for 8 channels of metering in the output rack of every song, and have come to know what kinds of levels I need for certain sounds, so that it’ll sound properly balanced with the band.

Neil

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#9

Agree.
I’d love to see the in/out vu meters in the controller bar as optional.
On my live screen i don’t show the top bar, only the song names. The rest is space for song notes.

I’m now using an external Vu meter by hornet but it takes to much screenspace.

Furio, you can also set the colors of the vu meter, mine is set from green to red, so i notice clipping faster.
In my racks i mix for 0db or lower and i use a master rack to control the output level. I also set that curve hyper so that i don’t raise to much on stage

#10

Indeed ears and eyes are the first level of measurement and you can’t always hear clipping. Plus it happens also on higher notes or polyphonic playing.

Why not k meter instead of track meter, Neil?

#11

Because I send 4 stereo pairs to front-of-house, so I’d need four instances of K-Meter. It would certainly give me better precision, but would probably take up half of my screen space too :slight_smile:

Neil

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#12

Now you’ve got me interested, what 4 stereo pairs :thinking::wink:

#13

I route all my racks/plugins to 4 stereo pairs by category - pianos, misc, leads, Mellotrons. Misc tends to be mostly pads, organs, that kind of thing. This gives our front-of-house engineer some control over balancing the mix live, to accommodate different rooms etc.

Neil

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#14

you’re still in the Pink Floyd tribute I guess? :slight_smile:

#15

That’s not me :slight_smile:

#16

ah sorry :slight_smile:
I just tried K meter but seems it uses more CPU

hm…
but I guess it’s the best option for meters

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#17

Wow…
4 stereo pairs output.
Last Saturday night I fought to get one pair.
Mixer was 32 tracks, 4 not working, and a benefit project with many guys playing.
My hard job was to increase volume on solo parts.
And the guy on FOH asked several times to decrease organ sounds.
At home, with C3 everything was right balanced and well under 0 dB.
On stage I suffered…
Usual soundcheck and gig troubles: guitar level increasing every song. They have easy access on amplifier volume. I cannot…
In my small pub gigs I solved the eternal problem using personal monitors.
This time I relied on professional service with big monitors.
I was wrong…

Anyway, from small amateur to serious pro use: C3 is wonderful on routing and programming, less performant on metering.
I am sure Brad knows that, we will see something better in the future.
Again: some bars that can be sized, with colors, memory and references.
That would be enough for most of us. Reaper is for me a good example

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#18

This all sounds reasonable to me… but I’m a little reluctant to jump into it because I suspect there a lot of subtle detail here that I need to be considering.

Some questions:

  • are these levels something you’d want shown all the time, or as temporary popups?
  • should they be docked into Cantabile’s main window or are floating popups better?
  • is this required for just the main input/output levels, or would you want this anywhere a level meter currently exists?
  • resizable, or just really large?
  • horizontal or vertical?
#19

Diagonal for me, please. I like diagonal things.

(Returning to my rock now…)

Terry

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#20

Hey Brad,

Just my 2 cents … The best model I think would be vertical but available as an overlay so it can be adjusted from medium sized to fairly tall say 80% of total window height and with transparency adjustments so you can see the main screen beneath if you want. It could be set up as side by side with some manageable number of empty slots, say six to ten across the full window width that could be populated by adding some means of selecting the slot with the small meter you wanted to show on a large slot from either a VST slot gain meter, a rack output gain meter or an output route gain meter from one of the above. It would also be great if each meter had the corresponding gain adjust grab handle like you have on the Monitor meters. This would be the most flexible way I think to get started. Another idea would be to be able to designate what the monitor area held and then have the option to make that collection of meters with their gain grab handles appear as the larger transparent meter/gain adjusts.

Dave

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