Home › Forums › Breakaway Professional Products – [discontinued] › BBP Input Levels
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February 19, 2012 at 8:13 pm #1278relayMember
Hi, I have just started to look at the BBP. Can someone give me an idea of what range of input levels the processor can handle please? I guess that this to an extent depends upon the type of sound card being used but beyond that – I notice that the meters flash pink on peaks when I push the input up too high. What is it that triggers the pink colouration of the meters please?
Thank you very much…
February 19, 2012 at 8:56 pm #13042BokiMember"flashing pink" you are pushing input over 0dB. It’s always best to have bit lower input then bit higher. Up to -6dB is ok.
February 19, 2012 at 10:14 pm #13043GeorgeMemberI think, -12db (average) it’s the best.
February 20, 2012 at 4:41 am #13044JesseGMemberan average input loudness (the solid slow-moving part of the input meter) where the "reference ITU level" indicator (the line that doesn’t move unless you adjust the ITU ref level) is at on the input meters is best, and ideally setting it low enough so that you never have to worry about peaks. 🙂 the presets are designed with this in mind. cheers.
February 20, 2012 at 6:57 am #13045GeorgeMemberAverage input loudness? I thought that the question was about input peaks, when the level comes over 0db and the color becomes pink….
By the way, still prefer to keep levels (peaks and not loudness) from -18db to -6db (-6db at very rare cases) with an
peak average at -12db.
I believe that this gives more headroom to the input,special if the tracks are gained with an application before to have almost same levels track by track.Have a nice day,
GeorgeFebruary 20, 2012 at 12:00 pm #13046JesseGMemberThe question is about input peaks, and I addressed it by saying that as long as the input loudness is relatively matching or otherwise not exceeding where the ITU input reference level (and matching indicator) are set to, that the sound will be ideal.
The peak signal levels don’t even tell us about how loud the peak is, much less the average loudness. For instance… Undo uses a psycho-acoustic model for its peak detection, not the signal levels, because it sounds quite wrong and screwed up going by just the signal levels "at face value". Leveling based on the signal peaks has no bearing on peak or average *subjective* loudness, which is also how the noise gating works in Breakaway. When you adjust the ITU input reference levels, it’s also adjusting the noise reduction thresholds. ITU’s 1770-1 aka LKFS is very close to subjective loudness. The mean deviation is a few tenths of a db father than ITU 1770-2 aka EBU R128 aka Loudness Unit aka LU… which I’m fairly sure will be in the next Breakaway.
Long story short… It’s best to set the average input loudness low enough to where you never have to worry about peak signal levels at all. And to make sure the ITU reference level roughly matches it so that the correct noise reduction is applied.
An average "not too slammed" modern recording:
Donald Fagen – IGY:
Still 6dB of headroom on IGY, and you’ll be very hard pressed to find anything much more dynamic than IGY when it’s at its peak loudness. That’s with an ITU reference at the new industry standard of -23dB (LKFS in this case). The ITU reference can be set up to 8dB lower than this., which would give you a very overkilled 14dB peak headroom on IGY. If you were a DJ, mixing in say… the latest Katy Perry song, at the same peak signal levels, the Katy Perry would blow IGY out of the water, ruining the mix, and potentially having a lot of background noise not being properly dealt with.
🙂
February 20, 2012 at 12:58 pm #13047timmywaParticipantJesse, how does this -23db standard reflect on your advice to use mp3gain to -85db for all my music files? Does that still correlate pretty well or should I re-gain my library at a different target level? And the -6db adjustment to the replaygain settings inside Winamp?
Thanks.
February 20, 2012 at 1:03 pm #13048BokiMemberis that new R128 ?
February 20, 2012 at 1:18 pm #13049JesseGMember@Tim, I would have to look into that before I replied. It’s likely that someone has already done the leg work on the statistics over at PLOUD.
@Bojcha, no that’s the currently public Breakaway Live input meter. ITU 1770-1 / LKFS.
February 20, 2012 at 9:48 pm #13050relayMemberThank you for those useful replies – Its good to see a forum with lots of participation along with good information being posted!
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