The tool being discussed does not run autogain on your analog to digital converter hardware... it only runs auto gain on the material after it has been digitized. For example, the round trip monitor loop or playback.
 
There are many hardware units that do have autogain function on the analog to digital conversion. that function is built in to the hardware, its firmware and its software interface.
 
This idea:
 
"A good Tracking Engineer will sit at the Board during recording, listen to what is going to be recorded,
and then ride the Fader during the recording process to keep the level at the appropriate point, to the 
best of his ability.  He doesn't just sit there while the Artist is performing.  

VUMeter just does this for you.  It will "ride the fader" automatically while you are recording, to keep the 
level at approximately the appropriate input level.  It is not meant to be used on the playback side per se.
It's primarily designed to be used on the "Recording" side."
 
Should be re evaluated.
 
 
This idea:
 
"One of the best way to use the HoRNet VU Meter is to put it on the track you are going to record, click on the dBFS reference number and set it accordingly to the specifications of your converter, then forget about your DAW peak meters, try to make your signal peak at 0VU at most, or if you want to be hot aim to +1VU or +2VU, don't worry about clipping the signal, the HoRNet VU Meter will blink RED if the signal is clipping."
 
Should be evaluated.
 
If people think about it long enough they'll figure out that the meter that already exists in their DAW blinks RED when you clip and anytime your meter or the Hornet blinks red you should actually worry about it no matter who tells you not to worry about it.
 
 
 
best regards,
mike
 

Mike, THANK YOU for the long and insightful post. Dude, that was awesome. It also confirms what my gut was telling me. I haven't had gnarly recordings since someone here pounded into me to get my incoming peaks at -6db - the red line. It took me awhile to wrap my head around noise floor and the fact it's so low with 24bit recordings that you don't have to have slammed meters to have enough great signal to work with. Recently, I picked up the tip to use the trim control on each track after recording and before mixing to create consistent levels to start with - keeping the faders a bit more consistent across the console.
 
I put the hornet on one track last night and listened to the kick that was recorded there. The hornet hit 0 when the Sonar's meter hit what appeared to be -5db. so it was close to -6db - the red line in Sonar. I have a big monitor and high res, so it could have been -6db - close enough. So in all, I don't see the point.
 
But Larry brings up an interesting point about riding the gain on input and how engineers would do that manually. For most of what I do, I would be concerned that riding the incoming signal like that would affect the dynamics of the music being recorded. Now, I have a friend that is a pro (ie he earns 100% of his living running live sound on big world tours and has a studio) and he recently told me about this jazz band he recorded where the singer is a trained opera singer. I has these expensive pres that he could not use because they have stepped gain knobs. He had to use something with a smooth rotary gain because her loud parts where CRAZY loud and he had to ride the preamp. I could see in a case like that needing to ride the incoming signal (but again, he did it at the pre stage not after), but for most recording purposes, wouldn't you want the entire dynamic range coming in?
 
If nothing else, my $5 just bought me an education and a lively discussion. :)

The point about riding the gain during recording in the context of this VST tool only relates to the monitor mix, not the actual recording levels. It doesn't effect your recording level. You still have to make sure you don't clip, but it can make your monitor mix inconsistent so that when you play soft it turns up the monitor mix and when you play loud it turns down the monitor mix.
 
In my experience, most musicians tell me I am fffing with their monitor mix when I am fffing with their monitor mix so I'd say that the autogain on a monitor mix is something that may or may not be useful. In any case I just make sure that monitor mixes don't clip using traditional auto gain tools, like a compressor, and intend for the monitor mix to reaffirm that quiet passages are quiet and loud passages are loud. I can imagine that other people have different opinions about that and as long as everyone's happy... :-)
 
I work with an opera singer that retired after 30 plus years at the NYC Met. I ride the gain on the inputs for him too, :-) and he doesn't use monitors.
 
all the best,
mike

It's a TOOL guys....

You can sit here and argue semantics all day long...

Use it or don't....that's your personal choice...

Is it the be all and end all of VU Meters?  Absolutely not, nor does it claim to be..

It's just a tool to FACILITATE a PROCESS.  End of story ...bye bye...
 
What do you really want for $5????

A happy meal... and some change.
 
 
FWIW, I think that there's something weird going on when a supplier can gross boat loads of money based on sales that are the result of recommendations made by people who don't seem all that concerned with accurately explaining how the tool works or what the tool actually does. That's how you end up with people wondering what they just spent $5 on.
 
best regards,
mike
 
 

I didn't feel it was my responsibility to accurately explain the vu meter. I found a cheap little tool that I like...and passed it on with a link for those who wanted to get the details. I used it and Klanghelms vumt together to balance levels a bit before mixing. You can use the gain knob or fader for this if you prefer. Sorry if I misled anyone.

Hey, I don't feel mislead and I think this is a great discourse - I don't mean to offend anyone and I think all the dialog has been positive; everyone relax and have another cup of coffee - we're all friends here. :)
 
$5 won't affect my kid's education. It's all a learning process and I just posted as I struggle to see the purpose of it, and while some like it, I haven't seen an explanation that clicks for me as to what it brings to the table that the standard meters don't. To each his own though, and I absolutely don't feel mislead or cheated or whatever.
 
It's all good bruthas!
 
 
 

Hi Clint,
 FWIW, I think you did a fair job of explaining how you make use of the tool. When I saw your initial post I went and got the details for myself.
 I don't think the company did a very good job at describing their product and I think they make some misleading statements.
 I do think that every time the mention of the term "input" is used when referring to what this tool does that it adds to the confusion that I think is initiated by the companies description about what the tool does.
 
 all the best,
mike

It's all cool. I found Mike's post informative as well. I had a lot of projects recorded at -12 or below. Projects not tracks. I used this plug to raise the track volume up a little to get the projects overall peaks to around -8. Then I started with a mix. If your levels are good to begin with...It's not needed.

Hi, Saverio from HoRNet Plugins here,
 
Mike, reading your post I felt the need to drop in and say something.
 
HoRNet plugins it's just me on the technical side and i can assure you I know what I'm talking about when i speak of voltages since I have a degree in electronics and I've been recording since the 90s on tape and ADAT and then on computers, I also have quite a background as live engineer. 
 
I don't know about you and probably you are much more experienced than me, after all these forums are full of wonderful people!
 
But i must say that the VU Meter is not an experiment, it's one of the first plugins i made because i find peak meters inside DAW useless, they don't track interpeak samples and actually only the maximum instantaneous recorded mathematical representation of the recorded voltage, to get a more realistic idea of the voltage you'll have on the converter's output you need to at least low pass your digital signal (like your reconstruction converter filter does)
 
Regarding the numbers i state on the page, 0VU ARE +4dBU by definition in standard analog pro audio, this is how every mixer is made. Sadly this is not how every A/D converter is made so a serious professional manufacturer (like Lynx for example) states in the spec where their +4dBU is set regarding the converted dBFS signal (Lynx Aurora for example is set to -16dBFS if I'm not mistaken)
 
Summing all together it means that if you have a Lynx Aurora and you put a sine wave into it and read -16dBFS on your peak meter, you are hitting you converter at +4dBU, it means that you have 1.23 Volts RMS or 3.47 Volts peak-to-peak.
If you are recording at -6dBFS you already are hitting the Lynx Aurora with 10.98 Volts peak-to-peak, the Aurora should not have problem coping with that since (if I sill remember) it has a +/- 12Volts supply so, 24Volts of range before severely distorting your signal, but many prosumer converters doesn't perform so well, they have lower operative ranges, so you should stay very far away from the 0dBFS mark.
 
You are right when you say that the peak meter should be enough, but when recording peaks (especially if very short) re of no interest to us since our ear is unable to hear them, if in the tape days we would have wanted to record every peak each recording would have been filled with tape hiss since many percussive sounds have very strong peaks, fortunately those peaks can be sacrificed to get a better effective recording.
This is where a VU comes handy, it measures the "perceived" level and not the peak so you can judge better how your ear is going to hear the sound, if it peak on the peak meter but has a very low level on the VU you should probably check you mike settings or place a fast limiter on the recording chain because all those peaks you are recording won't allow you to reach the desired final loudness and honestly, why do you want to record stuff you are going to throw away?
 
After all anyway it all comes down to recording preferences, I record using a VU meter because this is what I've been trained to do and I'm used to do but if you get good results without one go on and do it!
 
Regarding the AutoGain, it's a way too speed up the gain staging at mix time for me, I often work with many synth signals and dance stuff sent by other producers that blast the level of each track to the maximum during production, since i use many analog emulations I have to trim those levels down if I don't want to distort everything and clicking a button and have the plugin set it automatically to the specified VU max level really cuts the boring gain staging process down.
 
I hope this clarifies a little the reasoning behind the plugin, if you have any other doubt or objection I'm open for discussion, after all this thread could also result in an improved plugin!
 
Saverio