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4. Metering on Maximal 3 CM

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Maximal 3 CM includes lots of ways to meter your signal and this helps considerably with getting the results you want. A typical starting point is the pink gain reduction meter in the Maximiser section. Because of the automatic gain make up, it’s not always obvious when the limiter is actually limiting and this provides an easy visual indicator. 2

The second way to keep an eye on gain reduction is from the graph display. This helps us see what is happening over time. Here you can see that there are some extended sections of gain reduction. You can also see that apart from one specific transient, the gain reduction is not more than 3dB. 3

The graph can also help us understand the release shape of the processing. Here on our drum loop we’ve got the Release set to 2secs. This is clearly pretty slow, and means the gain reduction holds for quite some time. The graph display makes it clear what’s happening. 4

The main meters on the right give stereo metering in both peak and RMS formats for the inputs and outputs. The meters are two tone with the darker section on top showing the peak reading and lighter section below the RMS. The white line holds the peak reading. 5

Using peak and RMS it’s quite easy to see the signal level relative to full scale and also gain a sense of how loud it sounds overall based on the RMS reading. Hold readings for both input / output are displayed at the top and you can reset these collectively by clicking on them. 6

We’ve already mentioned that Maximal 3 CM is a true peak limiter and this is reflected in the Max True Peak meter at the bottom. Here we’ve set the Ceiling to -2.0dB and true enough this is the reading on the Max True Peak meter. Click on the readout to reset the metering.

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The final aspect of Maximal 3 CM’s metering section measures loudness units. Loudness units are now popular for delivering reliable master audio for different platforms. You’ll see the meter section includes three levels referenced to full scale (LUFS) and also a loudness range (LU) reading.

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The Integrated LUFS reading is often used to meet streaming level guidelines where readings of around -14.0 LUFS are deemed suitable. Here we’ve adjusted the Ceiling setting down to -4.0dB, and you can see the Integrated reading is now roughly -14 LUFS.

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Finally, the Loudness Range reading tells us the difference between the loudest and quietest readings. It takes a few seconds to reveal a value and will continue updating until you manually reset it. Here our reading is 5.8 for the whole track, which is moderately loud but within recommended levels.