Ableton Forum

Hi peers

Does anyone know if it's possible to connect a meterbridge to the pc, to get some decent metering facilities??? What I'm hoping for, is that somehow LIVE can transmit the meters via usb??? I guess... or maybe the audio interface could feed a meterbridge..... anyone???

Wow.
This is a good idea.
What would seem more likely is a piece software that could float above the Live app.
This seems impossible though, as you'd need to have access to Live's code to do this.

Cubase SX 3 has some very nice metering. It lags of course under heavy processor loads.

Nice thought though. I might spend $40 for a shareware app for better Live meter monitoring.

Lemur via MIDI?

hambone1 wrote:Lemur via MIDI?

sounds like a pretty expensive meter bridge to me

I too find the metering a little lame when compared to other apps's I use. but I guess the question I have is why do you need it?

Inspector XL from Elemental Audio, oops I mean Roger Nichols Digital!

It's actually temporarily unavailable but is actually amazing! Best metering you can buy.

There are high end hardware meter bridges that you can buy but they are in the 600 to 800 dollar range.

Check out Dorroughs

As somebody else wrote in another thread: Digital meters need to show you:

A: That there is no signal
B: That there is a signal
C: That there is clipping

Live's meters do both. A good mix has to with things like separation, transient detail but also how well it is arranged so that it doesn't get too messy. Or maybe so that it gets really messy, if that's the style.

And meters are way too crude to show you any of those things. A spectrum analyser will show you the relative levels of different frequencies, but the bass to mid to treble distribution might be good, it can still sound like a bad mix if everything is sounding woolly and lacking definition.

For vocals, it can be misleading to look at a meter for leveling your vocal track. Some words, because of the vowels in them will cut through the music more than others and a meter will give a false reading - you need to use your ears. Perceived loudness and absolute loudness are not the same thing.

My 2 Eurocents

I sort of assumed the topic of this thread was referring to individual channel meters.
That's one thing I'd like to see improved in Live.

As far as 2 channel metering goes (and spectrum analysis as well) I use Metric-Halo's Spectra Foo.

http://www.mhlabs.com/metric_halo/products/foo/

It's more than the average Joe might need, but a great product.

Wow I thought ugly graphics was a Windows exclusive.
And the standard version is $400????