Familiar with Wlm Loudness meter plus?

[steve trusty]

Any one familiar with how to use this? Not many videos go into detail. The one that does is in Portuguese. 

When I get short and long in the right range using trim and true peak, it gives a check mark on those boxes. But it affects my master output to a very low volume?

My master fader stays at 0. The Output before using the plugin is -1.0 db.

Use the plugin my output volume drops to -19 ish.. Then turning my master fader up the max 6db, It’s still really low?

Should I add a plugin after the loudness meter just to use its output gain to get my master output back to -1.0 for export? 

Hopefully this makes since. 

Thanks ahead of time. 

By the way before applying the plugins trim and true peak my “short” was hitting in the red -10ish.. after applying it sits fine with the check mark, but I loose lots of overall volume. Do I have maybe too much compression maybe? 

Thanks ahead of time

Edited July 15, 2019 by TryMyTones

[Robert Bone]

I have this plugin, as well, and have NO clue on how to properly use it.  I used to think I was reasonably able to reason my way through most applications, but this one has humbled me up something FIERCE.

I have NO idea on which 'standard' to use, nor best practices, nor even worst practices.

SO - I am KEENLY interested in this thread.......

Bob Bone

 

[Matthew Sorrels]

While I have the Wave WLM Loudness Meter I never use it, so can't really be much help there.  But a while back I did find the TC Electronics site very useful at getting a understanding on what these loudness meters are measuring and how/why people are using it.

https://www.tcelectronic.com/brand/tcelectronic/loudness#googtrans(en|en)

Click the links along the top Loudness Explained and Broadcast Standards.

Unless you are making film/video I'm not sure I'd let any loudness plugin adjust my volume.  Use it just as a meter and you adjust your own volume.  I think the tools in WLM are more for engineers that have to meet strict requirements and thus bring in a serious hammer.  You will always be better off doing it yourself, using better limiters/fader changes/EQ/what ever.

 

[steve trusty]

I agree. I sit down with it some more last night. My genre is metal, which for the most part is that “squashed” sound. I had to back quite a bit of compression off my L2 to get the wlm to act as it “should”. Not very happy with its results. Ended up deleting and turning the compression back up. 

I dug a bit deeper researching and it seems this plugin is essentially for podcast/tv. Sure it can be used for music but I’d say it’s more so for sound effects/music tracks for broadcast like Matthew suggest. I misinterpreted its use when purchasing. Oops ??‍♂️

While it’s cool to compare or take a look at, it really doesn’t help me much for my application.

Appreciate the input guys, hopefully if I’m missing something here someone will chime in. Otherwise another impulse buy just because it was on sale lol 

 Oh and it’s said the EBU presets are industry standard for music. That’s what I used to no avail. 

Edited July 16, 2019 by TryMyTones

[Matthew Sorrels]

Music for Broadcast is very different than radio/CD/streaming.

One thing meters like WLM are good for is helping you measure the loudness of a section of music.  That averaging can be very useful even for music.  I usually use a meter like WLM (normally iZotyope Insight 2 these days) so I can match the loudness of something after I've added plugins to it.  You can also run it against sections of songs you want to be "like" and then adjust your song's volume to match.  Don't worry so much about all the standards, just use it to dial things in.  Take a metal track you like, find a section like one of your songs and see how loud it actually is.  Then match that level with your song/section of song.  I think you'll find no CD music is even close to the low levels of all the broadcast standards.