Airwindows Hit Record Meter (v0.1.8): Free Mac/Windows/Linux CLAP/AU/VST3

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Si3WjFvfL4

TL;DW: Meter uses analysis of peak energy to rate songs for hit potential.

github.com/airwindows/Meter/releases

Here's what's new in version 0.1.8! Meter now focuses entirely on peaks (RMS is used for some internal calculations and the size of the dots in the Zero Cross section).

Each section is labeled: Peak Loudness, Slew Brightness, Zero Cross Bass. They all show red, blue and green dots. It's always the same data, just arranged differently, like this…

Peak Loudness shows the dots on a dB meter (labelling the horizonal lines as -6, -12, -18, -24, and -30 dB). This is the same as a normal RMS meter, except it's only showing peaks: if they are not showing up at the bottom of the meter, the RMS loudness is too loud to let them go down there.

Slew Brightness arranges the dots by slew factor, so brighter ones will be higher (as a rule).

Zero Cross tracks how long the audio could go before crossing zero, so this is not only presence of low bass, it's also about whether there are higher frequencies to interfere with that bass. It's also labelled now, at 200 hz, 40 hz and 20 hz (which is the bottom of the meter). Again, it tracks not just whether bass exists, but whether it's allowed to dominate. If you notice, there are lines higher than 200hz around where the 'Zero Cross' label is: those lines are 2k and 20k, and most audio shouldn't even get near there for zero crossings. Refer to music you like as a reference for how this ought to look.

There's a line of text now that tells you about three things: the original Loudness measurement (which isn't RMS, it's the raw density of how many peaks are present), a new measurement for novelty (how much the pattern of peaks changes, making a different sound), and a measurement of how many bright, loud, and dark peaks happened. Dark peaks aren't always bass, they're just peaks where the slew isn't high enough, just as bright peaks are all slew and treble. Meter now keeps track of this to tell you if you're over-bright or over-dark.

And there's a rating, like there was before. But now it's not 'peak loudness'. Now it's novelty MINUS peak loudness and MINUS how off-balance the bright/dark peaks are. The idea was to track down roughly how striking the sounds were, even though Meter doesn't know what a note is or understand music per se. Turns out, this new Meter is very good at singling out breakthrough songs that broke a big act (for instance, its favorite Led Zeppelin track is Good Times Bad Times) and career-making records like Sergeant Pepper. It likes punchy, dynamic music like the B-52s and the Beastie Boys and Chic. Its favorite Aerosmith track seems to be Walk This Way, and it's sorted the Yes tracks I've so far recorded, into a list that is almost exactly sorted by record sales.

If you think that's interesting and want to mix stuff to make Airwindows Meter happy, the results you get will probably sound good once you're done. I can't make it give you Top Ten hits, that stuff was back when we had a record industry. But it can help you get striking and exciting sounds. You can also use it to match other music you know: study the meters and make your music match what you see on your target music and that should help. But to pursue hits as Meter understands them, allow for a bunch of headroom and then use up ALL that space with peak energy. It likes things a little dry, not loads of reverb, and it likes it when the arrangement leaves spaces: if possible, space like the song is breathing in tempo with the desired music. Definitely pay attention to whether bright/dark is out of balance, but you can either go for the hi-fi sound of bright/dark peaks, or you can just try to make all the sounds peak out as loudly as possible, which means mixing everything to be loud and sonorous. Both work.

There's more tools coming for working with all this, but this is a good update for being able to keep track of what you're doing with all those plugins. If Meter breaks or fails to work for you, I'll try to get help as to fixing it: I'm out over my skis working with JUCE but with the help of the Pamplejuce framework, I can try to provide GUI plugins. Have fun!

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The Clap version of this isn't happy being dragged on to a secpond monitor on my system. VST3 version blinks but then goes ahead and does it. I'm assuming it's struggling with two monitprs running at different zoom/res?

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Clearscreen wrote: Mon Oct 07, 2024 3:01 pm The Clap version of this isn't happy being dragged on to a second monitor on my system. VST3 version blinks but then goes ahead and does it. I'm assuming it's struggling with two monitors running at different zoom/res?
Probably. It's based on the JUCE framework, which is how I'm doing this at all: I don't really have any ability to address stuff like that other than passing it on. Do you want me to let Sudara (the dev who adapted JUCE into something I can use) know? Thing is he doesn't maintain the CLAP side of JUCE either. I can try to get info to where it can be usefully heard?

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Hey Chris,

I've just sent my current project (EDM) through meter and got this:
Novelty AA
Loudness AA
Tone Bright39,Loud39,Dark20
Overall BB

So what I get from this, the track is too bright and loud but what am I supposed to read from Novelty?
What does "pattern of peaks" mean? Is AA good or bad in that context and what I supposed to do to change Novelty?
Another point is the tone section, I understand Bright and Dark but what kind of tone is Loud?

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So joking aside; the previous version should work much better on Ambient Hit Records or not?
You can be creative in any right place on Earth, and not only in the wealthiest cities. Bring the world feelings from everywhere, and not only feelings of capitalistic or jail environment.
― Aleksey Vaneev

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I dunno. It didn't like my cover of 4'33".
Image Image Image Image

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I also don't understand "overslew" honestly. I got a lot of red lines usually which in my understanding means "something is brighter that it needs to be" so I've tried to reduce them with a simple 24db slope lowpass filter on the master and see what happens. From the documentation of the older Meter versions I get that I want mostly blue dots, but I have to go down to 3.5khz with the lowpass to make the reds disappear mostly. Not even records from the 60s sound that dull. I fear I'm to dumb to read this meter

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A 4 pole low pass might be to steep at that frequency; maybe try a tilt instead?
You can be creative in any right place on Earth, and not only in the wealthiest cities. Bring the world feelings from everywhere, and not only feelings of capitalistic or jail environment.
― Aleksey Vaneev

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Yeah maybe, I'll try that. I've tried airwindows slew3 instead of a filter and while the sound becomes similarly dull, there are still many red lines, even with clamping at max.
It seems like meter is too "sensitive" in regard to what it considers too bright, which can be noticed even with older records. If I send 'walk this way' through it, I get quite some red lines too.

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Dr.Gunjah wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2024 2:34 pm Hey Chris,

I've just sent my current project (EDM) through meter and got this:
Novelty AA
Loudness AA
Tone Bright39,Loud39,Dark20
Overall BB

So what I get from this, the track is too bright and loud but what am I supposed to read from Novelty?
What does "pattern of peaks" mean? Is AA good or bad in that context and what I supposed to do to change Novelty?
Another point is the tone section, I understand Bright and Dark but what kind of tone is Loud?
OK, so… one of the easiest ways to get something that sounds like a 'big hit' is to have everything come off as loud. I've seen stuff register as nearly ALL blue dots: I've seen certain old Genesis (Eleventh Earl Of Mar) be nearly all 'loud', no matter what the level actually was or what was playing. Part of that is that W&W Genesis off original vinyl is super deep, distant and vibey.

Think of it like this, if Bright vs Dark is over bright, that means you have room for bass, and for turning down bright elements (not just filtering them). Simple filtering isn't gonna do you much good at forcing overslews to go away, you need vinyl-mastering-like tools like acceleration limiting. Slew control can put a hard limit on how bright it gets and you'll barely hear it until it gets exaggerated.

Also bear in mind that the 'score' (in big letters) can go down because you're pushing too hard: is it all clip indicators and overslews? Might want to let it breathe a little more. If you have Novelty of AA, you have spaces inside whatever beat you're doing, and you're not awash in reverb or legato sounds, so you have something meant to be percussive in some way. If your loudness is AA, you're trying to hit hard with it and you're not pushing it SO hard that things flatten out and get over-squished. It sounds like Meter is telling you you're basically fine except you're kind of leaning on the extreme lows and highs a lot: in some genres it's quite hard to get a 'loud peaks' as low as 39. Maybe you're working some kind of hyperpop thing, or a heavily synthetic mix where nothing's meant to sound real in it?

It's quite interesting that you get a loud peaks of 39 and still hit AA with the overall peak loudness score: that one means you have a hell of a lot of stuff happening, and yet there's so much boom and tinkle also happening that it swamps itself out… or, there are wildly varying sections of the song and one of them hit AA loudness (this will show in the section on the bottom, where you can see the curves and when the track hits AA on each of those indicators)

I guess, see if you can interpret it in a useful way? :D

Also, my "Walk This Way" off vinyl is Meter's pick for the best Aerosmith track and one of the hittin'-est hit records ever, and it hit a rating of AE. Novelty: AF-Startling, Loudness: BA-Loud, Bright 7% Loud 82% Dark 10%.

That's how different it is from EDM, but some of the principles will still hold. It sounds like you have room to pull stuff back and make room for deeper bass, which will balance things out for you… and rather than filter, try simply turning the bright stuff down and see if that sounds good :D

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Thanks for providing some more insight into how it's meant to be used. I'll have to do some more tests regarding which changes in sound have which influence on meter, like adding bass instead of reducing brightness.

Do I read this correctly that novelty and loudness scores aren't average but max values, so they will stay at AA even if later parts of a track have actually lower score?

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jinxtigr wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 7:20 am That's how different it is from EDM, but some of the principles will still hold. It sounds like you have room to pull stuff back and make room for deeper bass, which will balance things out for you… and rather than filter, try simply turning the bright stuff down and see if that sounds good :D
Yeah I think it definitely works for edm too, but maybe overslews and clips are not necessarily as bad as they are for other styles. I've sent Ghosts'n'stuff by deadmau5 through meter and it hit something like 2/97/1 on the tone scale having mostly blue dots and imo this track sounds like an edm track should sound.

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That's one of my test files, too! I'm currently scrambling to get something working better for the 'assign a letter score' section, with some progress. Won't be this weekend but I'll get something. I've gotten up to about 700 songs analysed and given scores, so that's given me a lot of information for when I throw all the scores out and start over :lol:

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jinxtigr wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2024 3:29 am
Clearscreen wrote: Mon Oct 07, 2024 3:01 pm The Clap version of this isn't happy being dragged on to a second monitor on my system. VST3 version blinks but then goes ahead and does it. I'm assuming it's struggling with two monitors running at different zoom/res?
Probably. It's based on the JUCE framework, which is how I'm doing this at all: I don't really have any ability to address stuff like that other than passing it on. Do you want me to let Sudara (the dev who adapted JUCE into something I can use) know? Thing is he doesn't maintain the CLAP side of JUCE either. I can try to get info to where it can be usefully heard?
DOH! I have a feeling you mentioned this with one of the earlier releases and I forgot about it... sorry, and thanks for you work on this :clap:

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