Hello Everyone,
 
Just wondering what people are using for per-track or per-bus analyzers?  I want to see the frequency spectrum, not sure Sonar comes with one, was wondering if there is a 3rd party one that is any good.

Thank You,
Adam

Voxengo SPAN is free and very useful.

Thanks!  it seems really useful, but one question.

I put it on my master bus which RMS is about -12db, peaks at -0.2db but the spectrum shows much lower!  am i using it wrong?

Sonar does come with an older one and the prochannel EQ Quadcurve flyout (at Platinum).
 
+1 for Voxengo/SPAN.
 
Melda Productions and Blue Cat Audio also do good ones in their free packs (+ extend to paid versions).
 
I'm also gonna try Vengeance-Sound Scope from the May 2015 Computer Music magazine (print, Zinio, Google and Apple newsstands). It looks killer with full 3D sonogram type stuff + more (from my initial glance).
 
Also ... Good cheap meters at Klanghelm and Hornet Plugins (if inbuilt don't suffice - e.g. too small)

alewgro
... I put it on my master bus which RMS is about -12db, peaks at -0.2db but the spectrum shows much lower!  am i using it wrong?

 
Not a lot to do wrong.
 
Your peak is as you expected. I trust you have run the same sample for the same period (too include all the quiet bits)?

+2 for Span

yea - it just looks like the chart itself doesnt reach as high as the RMS for the project.   If you look at my screenshot, the highest peak in the spectrum seems to be at -36db but on the right my project is RMS'ing about -12db, so im confused :)

OK ... now I'm no expert ... but ...
 
It's got something to do with using dBFS ('full scale') vs dBu.
VU and PPM are different measurements again.
... and the standards are different according to country/region ... and seemingly different broadcasters/institutions!.
 
It's all relative, and probably configurable, but e.g SPANs default I presume is Russian, which I assume refers to European Standards: −18 dBFS = 0 VU = 0 dBU = 4 PPM (?)
(Melda MAnalyzer is Czech - but defaults to 0 dB, as we are used to)
 
Start some research at the Wiki dBFS page.
 
I've seen some easy to understand charts when I had a quick look  in relation to VU Meters. I'll try and find them ... and learn it a bit better ( for my own benefit, as well as yours :) ). I'll report back if/when I have something worth contributing.
 
Meanwhile, if somebody has a 'ready made' explanation / links - please divulge.

Sound on Sound article.
 

The main thing is that  the peak and RMS reported by SPANs output meter are exactly as you want, as your screen capture shows.
Think of it overly simplified: each fraction of the graphic gets summed to get the levels shown by the output meter, just like mixing down tracks their volume gets summed.
If the bass section/lower-mid-upper-mid/high section of the graph were all showing something like -12 dB the combination of them all would be too loud. The graph is not like an audio waveform, because  an audio waveform
is also a timeline. There you can see a peak, summed of all frequencies, at a certain point. The frequency graph does not have that, the whole view, left to right, is just this split second, and the output meter shows the sum of that all.