[Rwp] trying to understand osara and the meters function

[James Teh]

On 27/07/2015 10:06 AM, Juan Bello via RWP wrote:
> You are absolutely right. UNfortunately I didn't know of any other
> documentation except for the read me on the gythub page.
That GitHub readme is what I'm talking about. Quoting the Peak Watcher 
section of the readme:
> 5. The Hold peaks option allows you to specify whether the highest 
> peak remains as the reported peak level and for how long. Holding 
> peaks gives you time to examine the peak level, even if the audio 
> level dropped immediately after the peak occurred. Specify -1 to 
> disable holding of peaks or 0 to hold peaks forever.

> INteresting is that when something is badly distorting or clipping,
> osara will not report possitive decibels like +7 db but I guess that
> is a reaper limitation or thing.
Nope. That's to do with the way audio interfaces work. You're taking an 
analog signal and your audio interface is converting it to digital. 0dB 
represents the maximum level your analog to digital converter can 
handle. If you go past this, you get audible clipping. REAPER never sees 
values above 0dB because 0dB is the converter's peak.

In contrast, say you have a 0dB signal on your input and you set the 
volume on your REAPER track to 3dB. In that case, Peak Watcher will 
report 3dB. This is because you're entirely in the box at that point; 
REAPER can handle mixing past 0dB. So, you'll tend to see values above 
0dB more when you're dealing with mixing, not recording.

Jamie

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James Teh
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