VU Meters not really dancin bad levels?

[lanterns]

I can hear myself and my acoustic just fine and if it weren't for my eyes looking at the VU's and seeing what appears to be no level, I would keep playing and say eff it!
the monitor is not up too high, so what's the deal? does anyone else record music without paying any mind if the VU's don't reach -0?

[OM15.2]

recorder or mixer?

if it's VU's on a mixer, as long as it sounds fine to you then, for me, it is fine. If it's the recorder - well ultimately you want a strong enough signal to deal floor noise and make use of your tape width / bit depth (or whatever it is with 'putas). So yeah, possibly more of an issue there.

But regarding VU's, (my bullshit understanding is that...) they are giving you more of an average of the waveform not the actual maxium peak.

like as not someone will correct me and point you in the right direction .

[lanterns]

ah, it's on my 244 portastudio 4-track recorder/mixer.

[OM15.2]

just check a manual and yeah,

"...the VU's respond to the average level of the signal not the peak. The LED's are driven by a separate circiut separate from the meter ampilfiers, so that they react much more quickly than the meters. They are set to turn on at 8dB above the 0VU..."

So, the short answer is... my gear is probably different to your gear, but yeah you are seeing average not peak so don't think you need to crazy boost the levels.

[lanterns]

I'd almost rather not have the VU's except that they look cool.
I never really know what's going on with them.

[nick_a]

i have the same problem with my 144. i just make sure it SOUNDS loud enough and let 'er rip.

[jmoose]

They don't have to hit 0VU, but if the acoustic guitar isn't making them move that means the level is below -20dBVU. That's low enough that you might run into some noise problems down the line or might not have enough reserve to get it above other instruments in the mix. I'd turn it up a bit and try to at least tag 0VU from time to time.

Just to be sure though...we are talking about tradtional VU meters referenced to +4dB and not a scaled VU/digital meter or some other kind of weirdness right? The latter is a whole other ballgame.

[lanterns]

no digital vu. the traditional kind.
I'm only doing guitar and voice right now. this is practice for when I actually track drums. I'm going to overdub the acoustic and voice.

[ladewd]

Noise reduction will cut the dancing meter syndrome by 50%.

CA

[Mark Alan Miller]

I agree that if it sounds good, then it is good.
However, I am concerned that you're not making the most of the headroom on your recorder, and like mentioned above, may not be making the most of your dynamic range. That will almost always get you a noisier recording (with analog) or a lower resolution recording (with digital, especially anything under 24 bits... possibly making the sound harsher or "grainier".)

Get those meters moving a bit more, I say.

[lanterns]

it seems with every post a little more is uncovered that I didn't mention.
The preamps are all the way up. I didn't think about the dbx having an effect. I sing about 4-6 inches from the mic and play about 8 inches from the other mic.
It sounds fine! I was just worried that I wasn't doing it right! I love this board, though. Thanks for the feedback.

[Mark Alan Miller]

Hm - if the preamps are all the way up and you're not moving meters much, I wonder if some stage in the chain is seeing either an operating level (-10/+4) mismatch or there is some other problem. Also, many preamps add a lot of their own noise when on "10".
Depending on where the metering is relative to the DBX encode/decode, yeah, they'll move less because of that too.

But I'm glad it sounds fine. It would have me wondering...