Can you record a track's volume peaks?

[davaughn]

Hi-

I'm mixing and some tracks have a ton of volume automation on them, fixing various things. What I want to know is w/ all the effects, is the track relatively even throughout the song or is there more variance in some places.

One thing I thought would be intuitive would be if ableton had a feature to graph the actual output of a track through the recording so you could just look at each track and tell where peaks and valleys are.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Don

[synnack]

Generally I would say it's better to hear with your ears than your eyes. Some parts SHOULD BE quieter than others. A visual approach wouldn't result in a musical output. Otherwise, see compression for ideas on how to deal with this without automation. There are many compression tutorials out there.

[karaceca]

I would think Spectrum is able to do this? I'm sure Limiter also tells you the peak volume for a track every time you play it.

[davaughn]

Of course some parts will be quieter than others- yet another reason I would love a visual indicator so you can tell stuff at a glance.

Limiter and spectrum give you information at each point in time, but I want to see that information at every moment in the song at a glance. You could see all the levels instantly.

Anyone have any ideas? I guess you could spit out each track and do a moving average and plot it but there's got to be a way in realtime.

[Michael Hatsis]

I think Toneboosters EBULoudness has somekind of graphic history like your asking.
http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-ebuloudness/

[justin]

If you want to do this properly you should be looking at true peak metering, and there are several plugins out there that do this. I don't think this should be built into Live though, mixing visually is a dangerous path. Besides true peak metering requires oversampling which is a big CPU hog (afaik, its the only way to calculate inter-sample peaks).

tb-ebuloudness is a good example although that also deals with other loudness issues, more specifically with broadcast regulations in mind.