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alexaudio 29 September 2005

Though is may not be a 'mastering' subject at hand, I thought I would try this in this area of the forums first.

A few weeks ago, Cincinnati Public Radio took over the operations and ownership of another radio station. Along with that, we took on many new talented production personel as well as a news crew that produce their own material. In our production environment, many of these individuals produce program material at their desktops. They utilize more simplistic software (Cool Edit, Cool Edit Pro, Sound Forge and the like) since they don't need the more complicated and accurate software that many of you and I have the luxury of using (such as Sequoia or SADiE).

So, in order to ensure levels between their desktops and the control rooms are more in 'sync' so to say, what I am looking to do is to is provide them with some software that emulates something along the lines of a Dorrough Loudness Meter. The software I am looking at should be easy to use and affordable and indicate RMS level (and/or average level as shown on a standard VU meter) and peak level of the material if at all possible. If this software could be used as a Direct X plugin , monitor the output of a soundcard and/or be a stand alone application...that would be great. Anything that could assist in allowing them not to have to make major adjustments on the air (where there is a Dorrough 40-A2 loudness monitor meter).

The only thing I have found useful thus far is from VB-Audio. THey have a stand alone application called VU-Meter. It is close to what I am looking for, though I don't know how much it costs yet and having to buy a bunch of dongles that can be lost for this simple application is not something which I'd like to do.

So - I am looking for suggestions. Would any of you know of software that would fit this application. Thank you.

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Comments

alexaudio Fri, 09/30/2005 - 12:33

FifthCircle wrote: A couple things come to mind- First is the Pinguin meters:

http://www.masterpinguin.de/

Second- if any of these computers have RME sound cards, the RME digicheck software is quite good- and it is free. The downside is that it only works on their hardware.

--Ben

Thanks - but I think the pinguin software is pretty pricy, as I have to put this on about 6-8 machines. SADiE still distributes it if I am not mistaken here in the US - correct?

Alex

anonymous Mon, 10/03/2005 - 06:25

I'd have to second Steve's recommendation about the Inpector which is free. On the other hand, I just picked up it's big brother, Inspector XL, and am very pleased. It's replacing SpectraFoo which I spent a ton of money on and then they didn't port to OSX.

Be sure and try this demo. It's on sale for $89 (down from $219).

http://www.elementalaudio.com/products/inspectorxl/index.html

alexaudio Tue, 10/04/2005 - 22:40

Thank you gentleman for recommending the Inspector and Inspector XL. This looks like a worthwhile investment. I have downloaded Inspector, and it will do the trik for my initial request. Question about Inspector XL vs. Spectrafoo. I am doing some coorelation graphs of different cuts of 30 seconds of stereo wav files and want to compare the cooreleation different of up to 3 cuts (side by side OR in one graph). I believe in Spectrafoo, you can actually display one coorelation graph with 3 seperate readings on it. Is this correct? Can Inspector XL, a) first display a coorelation graph like Spectrafoo and/or b) do the overlay as described above?

Thank you ahead of time.

alexaudio Tue, 10/04/2005 - 22:51

alexaudio wrote: Thank you gentleman for recommending the Inspector and Inspector XL. This looks like a worthwhile investment. I have downloaded Inspector, and it will do the trik for my initial request. Question about Inspector XL vs. Spectrafoo. I am doing some coorelation graphs of different cuts of 30 seconds of stereo wav files and want to compare the cooreleation different of up to 3 cuts (side by side OR in one graph). I believe in Spectrafoo, you can actually display one coorelation graph with 3 seperate readings on it. Is this correct? Can Inspector XL, a) first display a coorelation graph like Spectrafoo and/or b) do the overlay as described above?

Thank you ahead of time.

Just to follow up - I am basically looking for the "Correlation History" function in Inspector XL - does this exist in that program? Thanks again.

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