Blue Cat's Plug'n Script - Scripting the Level Meter Range

[Northwood]

Hello,

I was demoing the Blue Cat's Plug'n Script, and tried to do some simple changes to the script "Level Meter". I wanted the readings to go to -120 dB instead of -60 dB

I could change the visuals, but not the readings – it just doesn't "see" audio below -60 dB. Is this a limitation of the building block, or am I just missing something in the code?

Thanks.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Thank you for trying our plug-in. There are two places in the script that need to be modified, for the definition and then the computation of the outputs:

Code: Select all

    Line 32: parameters range definition
for(uint i=0;i<audioInputsCount;i++)
    {
        outputParametersUnits[i]="dB";
        outputParametersMin[i]=-120; ///< CHANGED TO -120dB
        outputParametersMax[i]=0;
    }

Code: Select all

 Line 75: meter value computation
void computeOutputData()
{
    for(uint i=0;i<audioInputsCount;i++)
    {
        if(levels[i]>pow(10,-6)) ///< CHANGED TO -120 dB limit
            outputParameters[i]=20*log10(levels[i]);
        else
            outputParameters[i]=-120; ///< CHANGED TO -120 dB minimum value
    }
}

Hope this helps!

[Northwood]

Thanks! That did the job.

One more question:
I did a test comparing the CPU usage of the "Blue Cat's Plug'n Script" with the Level Meter script – and "Blue Cat's DP Meter Pro".
The DAW said that "Plug'n Script" used twice as much CPU as "DP Meter Pro", and when I turned off all meters – four times as much. Can this be correct?
(I want to get the level info into another application via CC and I want to keep the CPU usage as low as possible. I thought that the Plug'n Script would be the least taxing, but it seems like it’s not.)

Thanks again.

[Blue Cat Audio]

CPU usage with scripts may indeed be higher than with native plug-ins, for several reasons:
First, the scripts compiler will not be able to perform as many optimizations as with native C++ code that we use for our own plug-ins.

Also, with some hosts (such as Pro Tools), the CPU usage may look higher, even if it is not the case, because the Plug'n Script plug-in is using its own thread to run scripts, and CPU reporting sometimes does not work properly because of this.

[Northwood]

OK. Good to know. Thanks for the info.