A Guide to Using DP Meter 5 for Loudness Measurement & Gain Staging

Tutorial | Feb 28, 2023

In this video, I explain how to use DP Meter 5 to measure loudness levels and gain staging. I also explain the different modes, such as RMS mode, EVO mode, and dial mode. I show how to use the RMS integrated value, RMS momentary, RMS momentary max, true peak max, crest factor, and loudness range. I also explain how to use the gain setting, match button, and reference level. Lastly, I explain why you should use EVO instead of RMS, and how frequencies are factored into the numbers.

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Questions & Answers #

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is DP Meter 5 and why should I use it? #

DP Meter 5 is a loudness measurement precision meter and a gain staging tool. It is completely free and resizable, which makes it a great tool to use in audio production. It measures the loudness of audio material by taking the peaks, calculating the average level over a certain distance, and then remembering the highest peak. It also has gain staging capabilities, which allow you to match the loudness of your audio material to a reference level. This is helpful for staying consistent in your audio production.

What is the difference between RMS and EVO? #

The main difference between RMS and EVO is that RMS is an older method of measuring loudness and is not standardized, meaning that different plugins use different values for RMS. EVO is much better than RMS, as it standardizes the measuring windows with specific terms such as integrated, short-term and momentary. It also takes into account the Fletcher Munson curve, which is the frequency curve of our ear perception.

How can I use the DP Meter 5 to gain stage my audio material? #

You can use the DP Meter

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00.000] Hey folks, welcome back.
[00:02.880] Someone on my channel asked me to do a guide on DP Meter 5 and I want to do this with this
[00:07.160] video.
[00:08.160] So it's a loudness measurement precision meter.
[00:12.240] It's also a gain staging tool because you can change the loudness automatically and I
[00:16.920] want to show you how I use it and why you should use it too because it's completely
[00:21.400] free and it's resizable, which is nice to have.
[00:26.440] So here this DP Meter is on the master on this track you can listen to in the background
[00:32.240] and I want to give you some ideas what you can do within this plugin.
[00:37.960] So first we have different modes.
[00:39.560] We have three modes, the RMS mode, EVO mode and dial mode here.
[00:46.000] So first I start with RMS because it's the oldest kind of method of measuring loudness
[00:52.880] and a lot of people are still familiar with it.
[00:55.800] Even though EVO is much better I want to start with RMS because it's kind of the same thing
[01:00.640] and it also explains why we have EVO now instead of RMS.
[01:05.480] So with RMS here we have multiple levels here, you can see that, maybe hit play.
[01:12.680] And we have also some settings here at the top.
[01:16.920] So at first we have here an RMS integrated value which calculates basically the average
[01:25.600] level of the peaks.
[01:27.120] So when we have audio material we can see here down here in the oscilloscope, maybe unfreeze
[01:34.120] this.
[01:35.120] You can see here we have peaks, right, which means we can measure these in values.
[01:42.280] And if you then take all these peaks, all the values of these peaks, all the loudness
[01:47.640] of these peaks and measure them over the whole track from start to finish, and then take
[01:53.800] these values and calculate the average value of these to get this number.
[01:58.800] And this tells you basically the integrated RMS loudness level of your whole track.
[02:05.680] And you have to play back the whole track from start to finish.
[02:09.520] That's the idea about it.
[02:11.560] So then we have RMS momentary which does the same thing.
[02:15.200] It calculates or takes the peaks, the loudness of the peaks, and calculates an average value
[02:21.960] out of it.
[02:23.040] But here it takes a time window and we can change the time window here at the top right.
[02:28.520] It's at the moment 600 milliseconds.
[02:31.920] You take basically the time frame, or let's look here down at the oscilloscope again on
[02:37.400] the right side.
[02:40.040] You can see we have some kind of window, right?
[02:42.240] In this window we have multiple peaks fitting at one time.
[02:47.480] And we can also change the window timing.
[02:51.680] So when we click on oscilloscope here and change the pitch here, the key follow, you
[02:58.720] can see now we have multiple or more peaks in this window.
[03:03.600] The window still moves across our track, but the window is bigger, right?
[03:07.840] So this is basically what this number here does.
[03:11.760] We take a time frame of 600 milliseconds, take all these peaks, and calculate the average
[03:18.040] value.
[03:19.040] This is what you see here.
[03:20.040] And you can change this RMS timing here with the RMS mode, which is important maybe if
[03:26.680] you want to compare this value to some kind of other meters, maybe you have a limiter.
[03:32.800] And because RMS is not standardized, every kind of limiter that has an analyzer in it
[03:37.880] or every analyzer out there uses different kind of a different value for this.
[03:43.280] Some have 400 milliseconds, some are 500, you know.
[03:47.160] So it's, it differs from plug-in to plug-in.
[03:50.720] So you can change this here to have a number you can compare to other meter plug-ins or
[03:58.000] limiter plug-ins or compressor plug-ins or whatever.
[04:01.440] Okay.
[04:02.440] So this is the average loudness of your track, your momentary average loudness of your track
[04:07.440] measured within a time frame.
[04:10.240] Then we have the RMS momentary max, which is just a value that remembers the last highest
[04:19.280] number you hit with this meter.
[04:22.440] So if you hit here maybe minus six, then this one changes here to minus six and stays there
[04:29.000] until you hit the higher number.
[04:31.120] So just remembers for you the highest loudness level you hit playing here on your track.
[04:39.160] And this never reset.
[04:40.480] If you want to reset this, you have to click down here on reset, right?
[04:43.760] So now it measures again.
[04:46.080] And if you remember, the last highest value is here 8.1.
[04:50.760] You can see you reach sometimes higher numbers.
[04:53.360] Okay.
[04:54.360] So also you have to know is that the number here.
[04:59.960] The lower the number is, the louder something is.
[05:03.640] So when you reach here minus zero, then you do something wrong because then you have some
[05:10.720] kind of brick.
[05:12.120] Okay.
[05:13.360] So these numbers are pretty important for you because you can remember a certain type
[05:18.840] of numbers and then recall them in your memory basically and see if something is too loud
[05:27.560] or too quiet.
[05:28.560] You basically build up some kind of reference number table in your brain.
[05:35.120] At least that's how it works for me.
[05:37.280] I can remember certain numbers here and can tell instantly for this track, minus seven
[05:44.000] is maybe too loud.
[05:45.280] Okay.
[05:46.280] I want to go quieter, maybe minus 10.
[05:49.960] So you can remember these numbers and then you can act on it.
[05:54.920] Okay.
[05:55.920] So the top part here is completely average level.
[05:59.240] So it's taking the peaks, calculating the average level over certain distances.
[06:05.400] Here it's the whole track.
[06:06.400] Here it's a time frame.
[06:07.600] And just remember it's the highest number you hit here with the RMS momentary level.
[06:12.040] Down here we have the maximum peak, which is basically when you can see here all these
[06:17.920] peaks peaking, right?
[06:20.800] And it takes basically the maximum peak it's measured so far, right?
[06:25.600] So if you have only lower things and then later in your track, you have one snare that
[06:30.240] peaks out too much.
[06:32.040] It basically remembers exactly this snare because it's the loudest peak in your track
[06:36.240] and it stays there until it sees something that hit higher.
[06:40.400] On the master here, it doesn't make any sense so far because I have this metering plug in
[06:45.240] here.
[06:46.240] You can see after my clipper here, so you see basically the ceiling clipping setting.
[06:53.200] I clip everything that goes above minus 0.3.
[06:59.000] So of course the maximum peak is minus 0.3 dBFS because that's my clipper setting, of
[07:09.040] course, right?
[07:10.040] So it doesn't make really sense here to read that here.
[07:14.280] Maybe you want to use this in front of the clipper or of the limiter to measuring something.
[07:23.080] Then we have your true peak max, which is basically the same as peak, but this one here
[07:28.120] is true peak.
[07:30.000] So what's true peak now?
[07:32.160] So it's a bit hard to explain with words, so I'm going here to my drawing setting.
[07:39.440] So when you have waveforms, right?
[07:41.120] A waveform looks like this, probably, and when you play this on a speaker, you have maybe
[07:50.240] a one peak, something like this, and you have then some kind of clipper in there.
[07:54.920] So we clip everything here at this level minus 0.3, right?
[08:00.960] That's what we do.
[08:02.960] So we clip everything at this level, and this is here basically our, or this line is basically
[08:09.960] this here, this minus 0.3, right?
[08:13.720] This is where we cut.
[08:15.480] But the true peak is basically what you play on your speakers, because you have a speaker
[08:20.480] and the speaker has a speaker cone, so we clip here, the speaker has a speaker cone,
[08:28.840] and it's, of course, in the real world, in the real world, nothing really acts like this.
[08:33.760] It doesn't work in the real world like this.
[08:35.600] So the speaker cone has to make this movement moving basically in and out, and because it's
[08:42.120] a real physical object, it doesn't move like that.
[08:45.640] It still swings like this, right?
[08:49.440] The speaker goes out, and then here you cut, and then it still swings out, and then it
[08:54.280] swings back in from your speaker.
[08:57.560] So you have in the real world basically still a small thing that peaks over what you actually
[09:05.160] dialed in with your clipper.
[09:08.680] I hope I make this, explain this pretty clear.
[09:15.520] So what you cut in the digital domain is not what you get in the real world, because the
[09:20.240] speaker cone has to still move in and out and still swings a bit more in and out than
[09:26.360] you want to have it in your digital domain.
[09:29.240] So here is basically what you get in the real world.
[09:31.920] So you'll peak with your speaker cone over 0 dB by 2.1 dB in the real world.
[09:42.200] So we can calculate this basically.
[09:44.840] So when you play this back, maybe on a real speaker, you maybe discover some distortion.
[09:53.280] But for me, it never made any real difference to actually peak over 0 dB.
[10:02.520] So I usually completely ignore that.
[10:06.760] But you can still go to the master here and can say, oh, I'm actually peaking here with
[10:11.760] 2 dB, so I'm going minus 2 dB, minus 2, right?
[10:17.520] Everything is good again.
[10:18.480] So that's something you can do.
[10:22.800] So that's just for you to know what this is.
[10:26.120] So this is what your speaker cone or what your speaker actually does in the real world
[10:31.560] as a peak, as a maximum peak.
[10:34.160] So then we have here the crest or the crest factor, and it gives you a rough idea how
[10:38.920] compressed your material is.
[10:41.440] It gives you the distance or the difference between the RMS level, what you measure probably
[10:48.000] here with the RMS momentary level, the distance between the RMS level here, and the highest
[10:53.960] peak.
[10:54.960] OK, so this is the difference.
[10:57.440] What's in between there?
[10:58.600] So when you compress this, of course, the distance closes or gets smaller.
[11:05.640] You have more compressed material.
[11:08.000] You can see here, or you can read basically, if your material needs more compression or
[11:13.720] no, or it's maybe too less or maybe too much, right?
[11:17.160] You can decide on this number.
[11:19.440] Like I said, you have to build some kind of table in your head for certain numbers, for
[11:23.760] certain type of genres or music you produce.
[11:27.440] You can remember certain type of numbers, and then you recall it and can act on it and
[11:31.800] can say, well, I need more compression here, or I need less compression to something.
[11:36.600] And it's not really helpful only on the master.
[11:39.760] You can also put this on buses, for instance, the drum bus, right?
[11:43.440] This is what I do usually, and I can decide then if my drum bus actually needs more compression
[11:49.600] or maybe it has already too much compression.
[11:54.760] And this becomes important later on when you do albums or multiple tracks, and you want
[12:00.920] to stay consistent with the loudness, because how loud the drums are in your mixdown is
[12:05.600] pretty important for the overall perceived loudness of the track or how consistent something
[12:11.080] sounds, right?
[12:12.600] You probably know the problem here, make multiple tracks, and then you listen to all these tracks
[12:16.600] and all these tracks sound completely different, even though we have all the same frequency
[12:20.800] balance, all the same loudness, but they sound completely different, because in this one,
[12:25.920] the drums have different energy than the drums in another track.
[12:30.200] And you can use this here on the drum bus to basically even out a bit more the drum
[12:36.800] bus on certain type of tracks to get more consistency in all of these tracks combined.
[12:44.480] So then we have here, basically explained all of this, we have here some conflicts we
[12:53.440] can use, left, right, four channel, six channel, if you have multiple speakers, you probably
[12:58.280] also only use stereo, that's at least what I use all the time, because who does have
[13:06.160] six speakers, right, normally.
[13:08.640] But you can change this here if you want to.
[13:11.280] Then we have the gain setting, so you can amplify here the signal, you can say I want
[13:15.720] to have everything minus five dB, right, so it turns down, so it's also gain, gain knob,
[13:24.600] so you can change the volume and also change it back to zero.
[13:29.520] And you can dial in here a reference level, okay, so this is, this is now something I use
[13:36.080] all the time.
[13:37.080] So you can say, well, let's say integrated, we have an integrated value of minus 10, but
[13:46.120] I want to have my track, instead of minus 10, I want to have it at minus 18, or maybe minus
[13:51.480] 14.
[13:52.480] So dial in minus 14, and then you click on this M button, match, match loudness.
[13:58.560] And now it calculates basically the value here, the gain, so we need to reduce the overall
[14:03.760] value by, volume by minus 3.7 dB to reach with the RMS integrated level minus 14, right,
[14:13.200] so you can see now we have here, integrated value of minus 14.
[14:17.520] So you can use this basically as a gain staging tool to match all your audio levels to a reference
[14:28.280] level you dial in here, right.
[14:30.240] So this is very handy, okay, maybe bring this back to zero dB, reset everything, and I also
[14:40.000] want to change this mode now to eBoo, because eBoo is the, it's the real deal, that's something
[14:47.080] I use all the time, I don't use RMS, and you can see the difference between RMS and eBoo
[14:52.720] is that we don't have here the time frame and the filter, because that's standardized
[15:02.360] in the eBoo standard, that's pretty important to know, because now everything is more clear,
[15:07.880] clean or clear to communicate, right, you can say to your friend, well, this should have
[15:13.640] minus 12 short term loudness, and he doesn't need to know the time window, the RMS window,
[15:21.120] and he doesn't need to know the waiting filter, he just knows, I need to eBoo standard, and
[15:28.120] I look for the short term loudness, and then I need to see this number, then it's right.
[15:33.920] So we have now here, instead of average level and peak level, like we had here on RMS, we
[15:42.200] have now here integrated loudness, which is the same as RMS integrated, it's measured
[15:47.200] across the whole track, so you have to play the whole track from start to finish, and
[15:52.440] then you can read the number here, and you can say, this is the loudness of my track,
[15:57.680] the integrated loudness.
[15:59.760] Then we have short term here, and short term max, momentary, and momentary max, true peak
[16:07.280] and loudness range.
[16:09.680] So this one here is a bit different, because short term is a different time frame than
[16:15.160] momentary.
[16:16.360] So this is the standard, basically.
[16:18.400] It standardizes the measuring windows, right, with certain terms.
[16:24.880] Integrated is the whole track.
[16:26.520] Short term is, I think, three seconds.
[16:31.960] Time window of three seconds, and momentary is 400 milliseconds measuring window, right?
[16:38.240] So it changes like I showed you before with RMS here, it changes basically the time frame
[16:42.840] of the measuring window.
[16:44.800] And then these max values here basically remember the last highest peak we hit with these numbers
[16:50.920] in front here.
[16:52.280] So these change all the time, they basically reset, and these max values here never reset,
[16:57.720] they always remember the last highest value.
[17:00.560] Also here with the true peak max, it's the same, it's basically, like I said before,
[17:05.880] the speaker cone, it's the real-world true peak maximum value.
[17:10.640] And you can see here in IPU there's no peak, it's always true peak.
[17:17.400] So they completely scrap this whole thing here, concept of having a peak and completely
[17:22.920] replace it only with a true peak, because that's what is important about your production,
[17:30.960] right, how it sounds in the real world.
[17:33.760] So we also have a loudness range here, instead of crest, we have loudness range.
[17:40.600] It's also kind of a different number.
[17:44.040] And you can read also here, or you can remember these numbers and can read if your material
[17:51.720] is already compressed too much or not enough.
[17:56.400] So there's also a lot of numbers you have to remember.
[18:01.800] Also important to know for EVO is that in these numbers are also integrated the frequency
[18:08.480] balance.
[18:09.480] So having a sine tone at 30 hertz, which is a super low sub-bass, and blowing this up
[18:18.120] to 0 dB gives you a different number on here than having a sine tone at 1 kilohertz and
[18:24.560] going up to 0 dB gives you a different number, because different frequencies should be differently
[18:30.040] weighted because our ears are not perceiving loudness linearly, right?
[18:35.360] So there's a certain curve, a Fletcher Munson curve, probably to our ear perception.
[18:41.160] So this is also integrated in these numbers.
[18:44.480] So it's not only based on peaks, on peak values, there's also a frequency curve integrated.
[18:52.020] So this is why you should use EVO, because it's much better.
[18:56.720] There are more things integrated in this unit than just using RMS with peaks and so on.
[19:05.320] So, like I said, the frequencies are also integrated into this.
[19:11.440] Also here you have these match buttons.
[19:14.680] So you can say, well, this is a drum bass tune, right?
[19:16.960] So I want to have this here, minus 10.
[19:20.720] This is my number for this kind of chill out, liquid kind of old school jungle.
[19:27.320] Maybe minus 10 is way too loud.
[19:29.440] Maybe minus 12 would be nice to have.
[19:33.680] And then you can click here, or I use most of the time the short term loudness max, so
[19:37.560] I play a certain amount of time here.
[19:39.600] You can see, oh, it stays here on minus 10, right?
[19:43.920] So I click this, and I need to reduce here this by minus 0.4 LUFs, reach minus 12 LUFs.
[19:53.880] So this is what I said with these numbers.
[19:56.640] I know exactly my numbers.
[19:58.040] So for jungle, I want to have minus 12, for ambient, maybe minus 14.
[20:03.560] For drum bass and Eurofunk, you want to have minus 6, so super loud.
[20:10.480] And yeah, you can remember these numbers and can act on it.
[20:15.160] What else do we have here?
[20:16.160] We have also channel config, so 5.1 if you have a multiple speaker setup, but usually
[20:21.160] you want to have, it's 2.1 because you have two speakers left and right, a stereo setup
[20:27.880] that's what you want to use.
[20:30.760] And yeah, I want to show you also the big EPIDA page here.
[20:37.440] This is EBU R128, that's the standard, that's how it calls.
[20:43.600] There's also some text here, why it's invented and how it's used.
[20:47.640] We have also explained here the loudness units, what they actually measure, who peak, and
[20:56.160] then you're submitting what you explained to your momentary M, using a sliding timer
[21:01.040] in over 400 milliseconds.
[21:02.680] So momentary, it's down here, momentary loudness is 400 milliseconds, third term is 3 seconds,
[21:10.920] and then we have integrated, averaging the program from start to finish, describes the
[21:16.240] loudness of the whole track or program, right?
[21:19.600] So it's when you measure from the start to the finish, you get an integrated loudness
[21:23.760] unit, you can communicate to whatever, your client or your friend, whatever, okay?
[21:31.920] So this is the big EPIDA page, it's also linked in the description below if you read about
[21:35.440] this.
[21:37.480] And yeah, this is basically how I use it.
[21:42.560] And if you use it more and more in everyday life, you remember certain numbers and you
[21:47.040] can read or I can see instantaneously if something is wrong, or if something needs more compression
[21:53.440] or if you overstep the line on certain busses or on the master itself, right?
[22:00.000] And I also want to give you here an idea about drums, so here I have the drum bus, right?
[22:09.080] And let's say I remove this here and measure this, reset, and then after this, I use a
[22:20.280] clipper.
[22:21.280] So everything above 0 dB is clipped by this clipper, right?
[22:26.040] Everything I step over the line here, so maybe remove this.
[22:29.920] You can see we're peaking here with 1 dB, 3 dB, over 0 dB, switch this on.
[22:39.560] So now we clip everything, so it never goes over 0 dB, right?
[22:44.280] So we clip everything at 0 dB.
[22:46.440] So now having this dB meter now in front of the clipper, measuring everything, and
[22:54.400] I know exactly that my drums should be minus 12, loves your max, and can see it's already
[23:02.360] a minus 11.3, so it's not that far off, right?
[23:06.840] But I still want to have these drums loudness-wise, minus 12, so I hit M here, and now I reduce
[23:13.720] the volume, the gain, by minus 0.8, to reach 12 loves, okay?
[23:22.400] And then I just use the clipper after that to clip everything that peaks over 0 dB.
[23:29.640] And what I get now is a perfectly nice, balanced minus 12 dB loud drum mix down, when I remove
[23:39.920] the clipper, you can see I'm still peaking here a bit.
[23:45.160] Because the loudness doesn't say anything about the peaks, it's more about the average
[23:49.360] value, right?
[23:50.360] And we increase the loudness basically based on this average value, and then everything
[23:56.600] that peaks above 0 dB gets cut here with the clipper.
[24:01.320] So now my material is not peaking over 0 dB, and it's also minus 12 short-term loudness-LU-LOUD,
[24:11.200] which is super handy to have, and I do this all the time on certain type of tracks, or
[24:16.880] at least on drum tracks most of the time, to reach certain levels in my mix down.
[24:24.320] So here we have the music bus, right, it's only pads on there, and some sounds, the tp
[24:33.760] meter there, you can measure this.
[24:44.160] You can then say maybe, oh, this should be maybe minus 16 loud, and then everything that
[24:52.000] peaks above 0 dB is called by this clipper here.
[24:56.760] So now we match this here, right, so we increase everything by 2.8 dB, so we reach now minus
[25:06.240] 16.
[25:15.880] If you do this on all your kind of tracks, all your tracks, you say, oh, pads and lead
[25:23.040] sounds that kind of are the same thing, right, in multiple tracks, you want to have something
[25:30.920] around minus 60 luffs, the drum bus should be always around minus 12 luffs, something
[25:40.680] like this, the bass is something around, I don't know, the bands.
[25:45.760] And then you basically get the same mix down, the same rough mix down consistency on all
[25:54.160] your tracks across the board.
[25:56.200] This is how I use it basically to get consistency with my mix down.
[26:02.360] Yeah, that's how I use it, I already explained for 26 minutes now, okay.
[26:09.400] I hope I made this clear how this works.
[26:12.760] The last thing I can explain here is the dial mode, because this one is completely irrelevant
[26:19.520] probably for you, because dial stands for dialogue, and it's mostly used in probably
[26:28.680] in cinema, the dial norm, I'll also link in the description below, dial norm is the metadata
[26:35.160] parameter that controls playback gain within the Dolby laboratories.
[26:40.880] And it's, yeah, dial norm stands for dialogue normalization, so it's for talking stuff
[26:47.520] in movie films or in podcasts, probably.
[26:53.000] So it's the same here, it's, if you remember certain numbers, you can act on it.
[27:01.800] But all you have to know is that this is basically the same as RMS, I know, but with
[27:10.040] the standard, basically with the standard in mind, some things are standardized.
[27:16.480] What exactly, I have no idea, I never used the dial mode here, to be honest, I have no
[27:21.680] idea what all these numbers are for, but you can see it's specialized here for dialogue
[27:26.920] percentage, I don't know how this is measured.
[27:30.520] So it's a different mode of measuring something.
[27:33.160] So what you want to use as a music producer is probably the Ebo mode, it's the best mode
[27:37.720] we have, forget about RMS, forget about VU meters or stuff like this, always use Ebo,
[27:44.600] that's the most modern measuring method you can use so far.
[27:52.280] And it's very handy for me at least.
[27:54.480] Also this plugin is completely free, and it works very well, a link is in the description
[28:00.480] below, and I use it all the time.
[28:04.120] It's, yeah, it's the best gain knob I have, like I showed you with the reference level
[28:11.800] and so on, it's pretty handy.
[28:14.480] What else is there to explain, I think that that's it.
[28:18.280] Yeah, here in Bitwig, I used some buttons as you can see, I'm using here the reset button
[28:24.360] which is linked to this reset button here, and also this match TP here I'm using, which
[28:30.840] is this button here.
[28:33.880] So that's because I don't want to open up the plugin every time I want to hit this M
[28:40.320] button, I can use just the buttons by Bitwig and do it this way, so I'm basically going
[28:46.640] in here, play the track, reset it, then play back a different amount of time, then I hit
[28:55.320] match, and then I have exactly my minus 12 here I dialed in, right.
[29:05.720] Oh yeah, right, I'm also using this TP meter here compared with the crossover, I also made
[29:14.440] a video about the crossover, which is basically just a band splitter, a clean band splitter,
[29:20.600] and in Bitwig here, we can use this VST and put in in these bands, band 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
[29:28.760] there's always a TP meter in here, right.
[29:32.640] So maybe reset this here and use a new crossover.
[29:41.400] So I'm measuring the loudness with a DP meter on all of these bands, like here on band 2,
[29:59.080] and I have a reference level here of minus 0, okay.
[30:04.160] And when I use here this button, match TP, I'm matching basically here the, I think I'm
[30:12.880] matching the true peak maximum.
[30:15.880] So I want to have a true peak of 0 here on all of these bands, so basically what I do
[30:23.560] is I normalize to a peak level, all of these bands, so all of these bands should peak at
[30:31.240] 0 dB, that's what I want to have, and when I push now this button, you can hear it sounds
[30:37.760] much cleaner, so all of these bands are basically now peak normalize, which gives a nice clean
[30:55.080] balance to all of these bands, and please don't tell any mixing engineer what I do here,
[31:02.720] but it sounds so good to me, it's so easy for me to use, and yeah, when I have this value
[31:10.640] basically of true peak of 0, on all of these bands, also on all of these bands there's
[31:18.040] a clipper, you can see I have the clip here at minus 20%, so I basically turn down the
[31:23.240] input volume of these clippers, so I don't clip anything on these bands, I just want
[31:28.320] to balance out basically the frequency balance with this, but now I can increase the clip,
[31:36.680] the input gain of these clippers on all of these bands at the same time, so I drive basically
[31:42.280] all of these bands equally into a clipper on all of these bands, so with this method
[31:56.720] I can squeeze out a lot of loudness, I can see here it's minus 7, it can go very far
[32:19.560] with this and reach, you can see it's almost a brick, and it sounds still, it's not clean,
[32:27.160] but it's not super distorted, but because the frequency balance is there, you get away
[32:39.800] with this, instead of having this unbalanced and then using a clipper over the whole frequency
[32:49.960] right, you don't get away with this because the bass is of course distorting first, but
[33:01.880] here we have a frequency balance in there, when I made a video about this there's a different
[33:09.640] video explaining how I do this, there's also a link in the description, so yeah I would
[33:15.240] just want to give you a small rundown about the dp meter, how I use it and how you can
[33:19.920] use it and I hope it helped a bit, thanks for watching, see you next time.