Meter question

On my Master Bus, I've changed the meter to RMS Peak but I don't understand the peak. Normally, Peak briefly holds the highest value reached before either falling or disappearing but with RMS Peak, the peak is always about 10 db or more higher than the highest value shown on the meter. Why?
 
Thanks - rev

Normally (for example) the meter might reach -12 and as it falls away it leaves a peak marker at -12.
 
Hold Peaks, as I understand it, should briefly hold the peak before it falls or disappears.
Lock Peaks should continue to display the peak at all times.
 
But on both those options, the meter might be at -12 and the peak is well into the red all the time.
 
That's the part I don't understand, where is the real peak? Why is the peak indicator in the red when the meter never goes there?

Yes, that actually does help because it tells me that I probably have transient peaks that should be squashed.

http://www.cakewalk.com/D...mp;help=Mixing.17.html
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I've just checked using the latest ni in your post. I was editing a typo in my post maybe that was the problem. Want to try it again. Thanks.

RMS stands for root mean square. You can think of it as a weighted average of the signal strength over a period. Because it is "averaging," the peaks (single highest value) is always expected to be higher than the RMS over a long enough period.

The only time you really can get the peaks and the rms value to be the same would be a DC (0 Hz) signal. Any other signal will have peaks that are higher than the RMS value. A pure sine wave should have an RMS value that is about .7 times lower than the peak value (-3dB). So I would expect that any signal that contains more than one frequency would have even a higher difference between RMS and peak. Even if you limit or compress the signal the RMS and Peak values will always show some difference.
 
In addition unless you use a fast brickwall type limiter some signal can get through at the beginning of a transient. In your picture you have a compressor with 3ms attack time. This attack time allows some of the initial sound to get through the compressor and can actually make the peak to RMS difference larger because part of the peak gets through but then the rest of the sound is compressed.
 
There is nothing wrong with having peaks, that is part of what gives sound its timbre and dynamics. You just want the peaks not to clip when leaving your master buss.