KVR Audio

mauseoleum · Post by **mauseoleum** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 10:50 am

http://www.google.com/search?q=katz+k+system

greendor, awake the Sherlock in you ...

csl · Post by **csl** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 10:54 am

AFAIK, it runs back to the way Steinberg work out the RMS of a sine wave normalised to 0dB. The industry decided that a 0dB sine wave mathematically has an RMS of 0dB - this is the standard used by Bob Katz etc. For reasons I'm not sure of, Steinberg worked it out to -3dB RMS instead of 0dB, hence the drop in 3dB between the two scales.

Aleksey just decided to helpfully include both scales when working with SPAN. Don't blame him for the two scales!

You can verify this in Wavelab...

.jon · Post by **.jon** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:00 am

The original question was what the two values mean, and it's been explained now - other is plain RMS, other +3db for mastering purposes, apparently some experienced guy thinks that it's beneficial to adjust the visual scale. (ok, it's a bit confusing in this topic which one is the added value, but that should be pretty evident in the plugin).

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:03 am

OK - i'm not blaming Voxengo - just trying to understand. From the Elephant manual, Aleksey says: "+3 dB metering option is useful exactly when you are using Katz's metering systems. K-14 AFAIK is RMS -14 dB, peak RMS -10 dB. These figures incorporate +3 dB correction. So, after enabling the +3 dB correction you can examine your levels against Katz's metering system just by examining RMS and peak RMS figures"

I've been Googling, and it appears that the definition of 0dB RMS is a source of much confusion. It seems a lot of DAW meters are wrong - now I don't know who to trust. I agree, it's good that Voxengo has the option. Still totally confused and looking for answers ...

csl · Post by **csl** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:14 am

For the AES standard of metering: 0dB peak sine wave = 0db RMS
For Steinberg's standard: 0dB peak sine wave = -3dB RMS

dimitar · Post by **dimitar** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:26 am

csl wrote:For the AES standard of metering: 0dB peak sine wave = 0db RMS
For Steinberg's standard: 0dB peak sine wave = -3dB RMS

pls tell me some proper metering tools for Cubase SX
then?

I'm very confused....

csl · Post by **csl** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:36 am

Since Cubase doesn't use RMS metering what's the problem? RMS tends to be used in mastering to measure overall loudness - for mixing in Cubase you use peak meters.

Seriously, it doesn't matter - just use whichever standard's available. If you want to follow the K standards then use SPAN, looking at the lower RMS value.

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:47 am

Don't you mean the higher RMS value? Confusing ... aren't we saying that the lower scale gives a peak of -3dB for a 'full scale sine wave' (which I don't understand - how can it be full scale?). From what i'm reading, Katz and the AES say that 0dB RMS is defined as a full scale sine wave peaking at 0dB - which makes more sense. So isn't that the higher one?

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:48 am

Seems to me that we need to see real K-14 meters, instead of the confusion that reigns ..

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:42 pm

greendoor, RMS power of a full scale sinewave ALWAYS equals -3 dBFS. It's pure mathematics. That +3 dB correction arised from the idea that sine peaking at 0 dBFS should also have 0 dBFS power. Of course, that's wrong from the mathematical point of view. But now we have to live with that, and always wonder how RMS is represented in a particular program. There's no set 'professional' standard on RMS power representation I know of.

That's why I'm offering two approaches in both SPAN and Elephant meters.

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:43 pm

greendoor, what's K-14 meter? I.e. how it works/represented?

csl · Post by **csl** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 2:23 pm

greendoor wrote:Don't you mean the higher RMS value? Confusing ... aren't we saying that the lower scale gives a peak of -3dB for a 'full scale sine wave' (which I don't understand - how can it be full scale?). From what i'm reading, Katz and the AES say that 0dB RMS is defined as a full scale sine wave peaking at 0dB - which makes more sense. So isn't that the higher one?

Noooo. We're not talking about *peak* values, just *RMS* values.

Higher, lower, I forget which one's which...

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 3:26 am

Thanks Aleksey - I now see that this is an industry problem, and you are very good to cater for both camps. Examples of a K-14 meter are pictured here: http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id ... page_id=59

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:39 pm

I've released SPAN 1.6 - it features metering system switch and allows to select differet K bases. http://www.voxengo.com/

PeterL · Post by **PeterL** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 1:17 pm

Aleksey Vaneev wrote:I've released SPAN 1.6 - it features metering system switch and allows to select differet K bases. http://www.voxengo.com/

Great !!