Telling the Twins Apart

struknes · Post by **struknes** » Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:27 am

Of Ableton's two meters, side by side, which is the peak meter and which is the RMS? The user manual doesn't specify.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/mixing/

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:34 am

Peak is the tallest one, RMS is the shorter one.

Dalski · Post by **Dalski** » Mon Sep 25, 2017 6:31 am

struknes · Post by **struknes** » Wed Sep 27, 2017 2:09 pm

Tarekith wrote:Peak is the tallest one, RMS is the shorter one.

They're the same height. You must be using an earlier version. I'm using Live Standard 9.

fishmonkey · Post by **fishmonkey** » Wed Sep 27, 2017 10:55 pm

ah, they are not side-by-side.

side-by-side are the meters for the left + right channels. each of those two is a combined peak/RMS meter.

by definition the peak levels will exceed the RMS levels.

if you play some two-channel audio, you will see a pair of bright green bars, and popping up above those, dark green bars. the bright green sections are the RMS levels, the darker green bars are the peak levels. you will notice that the darker green bars react faster than the RMS bars. also, there are those small bright green horizontal lines, they are peak hold meters, and you will see that their levels are related to the dark green peak bars...

struknes · Post by **struknes** » Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:40 am

fishmonkey wrote:ah, they are not side-by-side.

side-by-side are the meters for the left + right channels. each of those two is a combined peak/RMS meter.

by definition the peak levels will exceed the RMS levels.

if you play some two-channel audio, you will see a pair of bright green bars, and popping up above those, dark green bars. the bright green sections are the RMS levels, the darker green bars are the peak levels. you will notice that the darker green bars react faster than the RMS bars. also, there are those small bright green horizontal lines, they are peak hold meters, and you will see that their levels are related to the dark green peak bars...

How did you learn all this? I read every use of the word "peak" in the Ableton User Manual and didn't find 80% of this. All it says is that meters "show both peak and RMS levels."

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

jestermgee · Post by **jestermgee** » Sat Sep 30, 2017 11:28 pm

It's the same with all peak/rms level meters. Colours and arrangement of the display may change but "peak" is always going to be your max level (the peak level) and RMS is the average level so of course the average can never be bigger than the peak.

Telling the Twins Apart

Telling the Twins Apart

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