Meters don't read correctly on simple audio?

Maestro wrote on 7/24/2005, 11:40 AM
This is something I've been seeing for a while, so perhaps someone can clear it up for me.

I have a project with only one audio track, normalized to -0.2dB. The audio track has NO effects on it, and neither does the master. Plain pass-through to the meter. When I play back the track, the meter peaks at +2.0. Why? Shouldn't the meter be peaking at -0.2?

Well, after looking into it a bit, here's a bit of interesting information: If I change the project "resample and stretch quality" to "Best", it peaks at +2.0. On "Good", it peaks at +1.6, and on "Preview" it peaks at -0.2 (as I'd expect).

Why would this setting change the gain of the output? Any insight?

-Brent

Comments

bgc wrote on 7/24/2005, 3:17 PM
My guess is that your project sample rate is different than your media sample rate. For example your project might be set to 48kHz, 16bit and your media might be 44.1kHz, 16-bit.
Vegas will resample the media to 48kHz and in the process there will level mismatches.
This catches me all the time when mixing 44.1/48 projects and media.
BPB wrote on 8/1/2005, 1:54 PM
I generally run a WAVES UTRAMAXIMIZER set very light to brickwall the master output to constrain my audio when this happens to me.
bb