[Voxengo SPAN] Spectrum Levels vs "Out" Meter

[exist01]

In SPAN, there's a middle section which is the spectrum and then there's a meter on the right labeled "Out", which is by default measuring the dBFS. I'm having trouble understanding why the two don't seem to have the same values.



As seen on this screenshot, the meter on the right is showing peak levels of 0dB while the spectrum is showing -30dB. Is the spectrum not measuring the same dBFS as the meter? Or is the meter simply taking the entire spectrum and combining it into one value?

Voxengo doesn't seem to have its own forums and the user manual doesn't explain this, so I'm not sure where else to ask this.

[Ah_Dziz]

"Or is the meter simply taking the entire spectrum and combining it into one value?" That's how it's done (by default in almost every analyzer). There are other options for how this is handled too. I use MAnalyzer all the time these days so I haven't diddled around in SPAN in a while.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Please enable the "Align 0 db" mode, and set the Slope=0. Also bear in mind that summary signal is usually louder simply because it is a sum of a lot of spectral components. It's natural that spectral components are quieter.

[sircuit]

Watch this short vide that shows what happens with the level when a 100Hz sine wave is mixed with a 1KHz sine wave:

https://gfycat.com/jealousdefinitekoalabear

Your signal’s level is actually what you read on the level meter. The spectrum you see is just a mathematical representation (“decomposition”) calculated from your complex signal.

So a bit counterintuitively, the bands don’t need to peak at 0 dBFS in order to have the entire signal peaking at zero (as you can see from the short vid above).

In SPAN, there's a middle section which is the spectrum and then there's a meter on the right labeled "Out", which is by default measuring the dBFS. I'm having trouble understanding why the two don't seem to have the same values.



As seen on this screenshot, the meter on the right is showing peak levels of 0dB while the spectrum is showing -30dB. Is the spectrum not measuring the same dBFS as the meter? Or is the meter simply taking the entire spectrum and combining it into one value?

Voxengo doesn't seem to have its own forums and the user manual doesn't explain this, so I'm not sure where else to ask this.