Tech Tip #6

This Tech Tip comes to us from Gary Oleyar, and underscores in a very candid way the value of a good meter and proper level management.

Get a meter. Just shut up, peel out the cash and get the Dorrough -- not the cheap one that has the exposed PC board, but a nice, usable model. Patch it into your patch bay somewhere easy in such a way that you can get any signal from any output in your studio, pre or post effect, to your new test device. Then put it someplace where you can see it immediately.

Get your test tones and templates in order and be able to route 1k absolutely anywhere in your studio. It's gotta be able to come from everywhere -- your DAW and from every audio port in your hardware interface, your DAT or CD player or whatever your master 2 track playback medium may be.

Learn the difference between dBFS and VU and where these two things live in relation to your facility. Note the possibility of discrepancies between +4 and -10 at this stage.

Then the fun begins. Start sending that 1k signal absolutely everywhere it can go, note the amplitude of the signal at every stage of your analog hardware, pre and post effect, and learn to calibrate everything for unity gain. Make mental and paper backup spec sheets of where each device kinda lives when it's at unity I/O.

You check the signal coming out of the interface with the Dorrough, make measurements, run the signal into an effect (comp/limiter/whateverer), and then come out of it back into the meter.

This statement should make sense: "When I send a -13.5dB FS signal out of my interface and into my Pendulum ES8 I get unity gain when the output knob is about at, oh, I dunno, say, about, 1 o'clock and the input at about, say......4."

Then read about what you just did and why anywhere you can't find anything about it.

If you haven't been at this every day with every piece of equipment you own (or are likely to own) then you don't quite 'get it' yet and this tech tip will have been long ago blown off by the reader.

Check back with me in a year. We'll both just start laughing.

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