You should be using your Volume Meter in Vegas to judge volume just like you use the Video Scopes to judge video levels. If you want to have your speakers match your Vegas meter you will need to calibrate them with a C-Weighted Sound Pressure Level (SPL) meter. Luckily you can find these for iOS and probably Android too so you can use an iPhone/iPad/iPod or other phone/tablet.

What you want to do is place a Pink Noise -20dB reference on the Vegas timeline and play it back in a loop while setting your master volume meter in Vegas to read -20dB. Then use your speaker volume on your computer to adjust the speaker volume in the room until the SPL Meter reads 79 dB from your speakers at the point you are listening from (i.e., your head) one speaker at a time. At that point you know that your speakers are giving you the same level as you see in Vegas Pro. You can create a -20dB Pink Noise reference wave with Sound Forge or probably find one on the internet.

BTW, your speakers should be as far away from each other as they are from you. In other words, if you are sitting 3 feet away from your speakers, they should be 3 feet from each other to form a triangle with your head at one corner and the speakers at the other two. You also want to use professional speakers/monitors and not "computer speakers". Computer speakers usually color the sound to make movies sound better. You want to hear unaltered sound with as flat a frequency response as possible. This holds true for your sound card as well. Consumer sound cards tend to color the sound while professional cards remain flat. If you really care about the sound, get a good sound card/audio device and flat response speakers.

I have used this free UE SPL by Logictech, Inc. for my Sound Pressure Level Meter on my iPhone and it works great. Make sure you set the Frequency Weighting to C in the settings for Slow Response. This SPL Meter by Andrew Smith is also really nice one that I use and it's only 99 cents for iOS.

(Edit]: I was doing this from memory but I realize now that I used Pink Noise instead of White which is why I remembered C Weighting because it measures more bass and Pink Noise has more base. You also need to convert the -20dBFS on the Vegas VU meter to 79 dB on the SPL Meter. This value is actually variable depending on your room size and application for example, 83-85 dB SPL for theatrical work, 78-83 dB SPL for television and, typically, 83-93 dB for music. So 79dB is close enough for the average small room for broadcast work.)

~jr

A perceptive question with a well weighted reply. Thanks Sage for asking and jr for your reply.

Grazie

Here's a tutorial from Brent Herber of Pro Tools. Interestingly enough he recommends using Pink noise instead of white. I know nothing about the differences between the two so I'll leave it to others to explain that one.
Speaker calibration for Film and TV Sound Mixing

Mike

Good answers on this thread. Just to add:

Once your sound system calibration point is set, using a SPL meter or just simply by ear for max loudness, the rest of audio mixing is all relative levels. where 0 is your 'thats loud' point.
Here is some information from LarryJordan of larryjordan.biz giving some good ballpark figures for relative audio level mixing. If you dont trust your ears that much, trust your VU meters. They are there for good reason.

Audio level we must not exceed: 0 dB [ever!!]

Total audio mix level: -3 dB to -6 dB

Principle speaker (SOT) audio: -6 dB to -12 dB [i tend to go for 6 compressed]

Sound effects audio: -12 dB to -18 dB

Music when its an underscore: -18 dB

Paul.

One quick note on generating your own pink noise. I have an older version of Sound Forge, so perhaps the new one has a preset. However, in my version, when you generate the pink noise using the Tools --> Synthesis --> Simple dialog, the "Amplitude" control is setting a peak, not an RMS level. So, with that as background, here's the reason for the post:

To get -20 dB RMS, you need to set the Amplitude control to -7.9 dB (peak).

[I]" Can anyone help me with their technique on how to make sure that the level of sound coming from the projects the same thing you hear coming out of the speakers? "[/I]

The question is wrong and there really isn't an answer.

There's no "level of sound" coming out of the project, just digital numbers.
What sound pressure level that should produce in a room is arbitrary. Just as your loudspeakers have a volume knob so too does the sound system in a cinema and everyone's TV.
Modern cinema sound systems can produce a sound pressure level way beyond what you're likely to be able to reproduce in your home studio or might even want to, at the maximum SPL a cinema sound system can produce you could do harm to your ears and building.

My approach to mixing a film was to decide what was going to be the loudest sound in the film e.g. a gunshot or explosion. You want that at 0dBFS on Vegas's peak meter. Adjust your speaker's volume control so that does sound loud, as loud as tolerable. Then leave the knob alone and mix relative to that. One can add a mark to the volume knobs setting however at different times (late at night for example) you might well find that too loud so you really need to turn it down and recalibrate your ears accordingly.

Another tip, use busses, one for each element in the mix. This can make it easier to make gross changes to the mix. It's not unheard of to have one mix for cinema and another for TV.

Bob.

Sounds good.

G

Right, but I think you're missing the point of the question. Your technique sounds like a great jumping off point, but you haven't told me how you have your volumes set.

Sure I may hear a gun shot, and say, Oh thats loud. I don't want it to get louder." But what if that's just because I have my speakers volume, or computer volume set louder so that it just sounds louder than it is. Then after editing everything quieter than that gun shot I realize that it actually wasn't that loud to begin with.

Do you see my question? I need to find a bass line so that when the meter in Vegas says, say, -18 dB I know I'm actually hearing in the room I'm editing in, -18 dB. Only then will I be able to understand what -18 dB actually sounds like to the human ear. Sure Vegas might say the audio is producing a level, but I don't know if that's the same level my speakers are producing in the room without some sort of way of measuring it/ setting it up.

In response to jr, I'm confused on how to combine the dB readings from the App that are positive to the negative readings in Vegas itself.

dB (decibels) are nothing but a ratio, based on a logarithmic scale. There always must be a reference point, or the number is meaningless. In the case of sound pressure level (the "loudness" you hear when listening) there is a standard reference, and the SPL meters base their decibel measurement against this reference.

You can't hear -18dB. In the case of Vegas' metering that number is a reference to 0db, which as Bob said, is just a digital number. The SPL in your listening environment could be anything, based on your amp, monitors, volume control.

The link given in one of the first posts, (the ProTools guy video) is your best bet. There are SPL standards for mixing environments for TV and film. I don't know you're going to come any closer than that to answering your question.

Edit: dB is one of the most confusing measurements you'll find. To understand, replace dB in any usage with "more" (or if its a negative dB measurement, "less"). So if you say, "I want this sound to be 18 less," you have to answer the question, "less than what?"

some confusion here Sage:
"Your technique sounds like a great jumping off point, but you haven't told me how you have your volumes set."
and if the reply to that was 'my volume setting changes like my mood changes'.. does that help? not really. And thats the point. Sound levels are all relative to each other. Asking to hear what -18dB sounds like is a none answerable question.
The person at the receiving end of your work is going to mess up any loudness settings you may 'think' you have set. There is no standard, only safety limits to prevent deafness. Its as loud or quiet as people like to hear it. What you and and all editors job is to ensure is that your peak is not over 0dB or you get gross distortion, and that relative levels below that are relatively correct to each other. (see list).
That way, the listener (viewer) will hear all the mixed signals together at the correct loudnesses to each other. The way 'they' like it.
So in summery, its not an absolute level or 'is that loud enough'? question, its more a question of, 'can i hear the spoken word over the music?' Or blimey that gun shot was loud!! in comparison to the water in the stream flowing...
Thats my best shot - no pun intended :)
Paul.

With Pink noise, power density falls off at 10 dB/decade of frequency. Which is how our ears work. White noise is a random signal with a constant power level at all frequencies. It's just noise.

I'm probably missing something, but why not use a loudness plug-in? I use the free ToneBoosters EBULoudness plugin http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-ebuloudness/ based on a suggestion from musicvid10. It only works in VP for stereo projects, but can be used in SF for 5.1. I add it to the final audio bus and then adjust the final volume accordingly. At least, I know that all projects are being rendered to the same average loudness.

wwaag

"Asking to hear what -18dB sounds like is a none answerable question."

Pretty much the same as asking how bright a projector or video monitor should be. The answer is, as bright as it needs to be for the person watching it. It's the editor's job to make sure that the material fits within legal levels and has a pleasing range of tones to depict the image properly, but the end viewer will crank up or down the brightness to taste or to account for ambient light.

> Posted by: SageGibbons "In response to jr, I'm confused on how to combine the dB readings from the App that are positive to the negative readings in Vegas itself."

It's just a mapping similar to going from Fahrenheit to Celsius for measuring temperature (only different but I'll try and explain). The -20dB reading on a VU Meter is approximately 78dB on an SPL Meter in a broadcast setting or 85dB SPL in a theater setting. One is a measurement from a VU Meter and the other is the measurement on a Sound Pressure Level Meter.

Here are some definitions:

VU Meter
A Volume Unit meter or Standard Volume Indicator is a device displaying a representation of the signal level in audio equipment. The ASA standardized it in 1942 for use in telephone installation and radio broadcast stations.

SPL Meter
Device used to measure sound loudness; often used to measure and balance the loudness of each speaker in a home theater system to "tune" a room.

So they are really measuring two different things that don't necessarily have a relation to each other, but in the context of broadcast or film you can correlate them.

The reason people are saying things like "The question is wrong and there really isn't an answer." and "Asking to hear what -18dB sounds like is a none answerable question" is because the question needs a reference point. You CAN ask what -18dB sounds like in the context of film because the film industry has established that signals at -20dBFS VU will be played back at 85dB SPL in the theater so if you set your speakers to this level, you will be hearing the same volume levels as the audience should hear in the theater. But without that context, you really can never ask what -18dB sounds like all by itself because -18dB is not a measurement of absolute volume but of relative volume and you need to first know "relative to what?" to answer it.

In the spirit in which your question was asked, all you need to know is that you output -20dBFS VU from Vegas and set the volume to read 78dB SPL at each speaker and you really don't need to know the theory behind it.

~jr

[I]"You CAN ask what -18dB sounds like in the context of film because the film industry has established that signals at -20dBFS VU will be played back at 85dB SPL in the theater so if you set your speakers to this level, you will be hearing the same volume levels as the audience should hear in the theater."[/I]

For sure, once you have a reference level then -18dB makes sense.

There's still a couple of problems, the spec appears to be -20dBFS = 85dBC which means 0dBFS = 105dBC but that's per channel and the LFE channel is spec'ed to have an extra 10dB headroom. All in all that's quite loud and you're going to need a pretty decent set of speakers at home and tolerant neighbours to push that SPL into your room given that in total a SPL of over 110dBC is quite possible in a modern cinema.

The other complication is that theatre sound systems also have a "volume" knob along with a SPL metering system and projectionists like to tweak the knob depending on the movie. From my experience when the cinema advertises a "50,000 Watt Sound System" they're going to make sure you get to experience those 50,000 Watts.

I still think the most important thing in mixing is the relationship between the sounds in the mix rather than any absolute "loudness". Thrown into that is a great amount of creativity. A well mixed soundtrack can make a big difference to the story, the audio palette is much bigger than the vision palette.

Bob.

" they're going to make sure you get to experience those 50,000 Watts"

*chuckle*

When i run our community old classic movie nights i run stereo from a pair of front mains with a 125W/channel power amp. I usually start the volume at about 1.5 out of 10. The most common request i have is "could you please turn it down a bit?"

I start mine at 2.5 out of 11.

Thanks all for the help. JohnnyRoy, you really got to the bottom of what I needed.

Now when I produce a sound that in Vegas reads as -20, I can use the SPL meter and adjust my speakers so that it reads at 78 ish and then I know I'm actually hearing a balanced relationship of what it will sound like if, in any viewing scenario, all things are also balanced.

Just remember that there will almost never be a case of anyone else listening to it at the same volume.

Dumb alert here . . . OK, I think I got all this down, loopy Pink Noise from SF10 -20db in VP . . however . . . . for the purposes of editing in my poky ole room, the Edirol Pro Monitors are too loud, so I need to turn them down. I'm guessing if I had more airspace behind my seated position; some soft furnishings plus wall absorbers then it'll be different.

This procedure is only a "reference" OUT to a final product? Yes? - However I'm needing to go down to 60db or less for editing comfort. And yes, I've got the 3 foot equilateral triangle Monitor setup.

TIA

Grazie

Sage, i suspect you still don't get the true picture here. The levels you are trying to set with your SPL meter mean absolutely nothing when someone else listens to your work. They will mess with their volume controls and have completely different amplifier and speaker setups to yours. All mix levels are relative to each other. Not an absolute SPL reading. Its wrong to think of mixing as needing an absolute reference. Its right to think of mixing as when something is louder or quieter than another sound in the mix.
And good luck mixing at 79 dB late at night at home... :(

Hope this helps.
Paul.

I'm probably missing something, but why not use a loudness plug-in? I use the free ToneBoosters EBULoudness plugin www.toneboosters.com/tb-ebuloudness/ based on a suggestion from musicvid10. It only works in VP for stereo projects, but can be used in SF for 5.1. I add it to the final audio bus and then adjust the final volume accordingly. At least, I know that all projects are being rendered to the same average loudness.

Refer to wwag's post above. It will work well for your purposes. Despite urban myth, it doesn't change compression or dynamic range. Only current limitation is you can't put it on a surround master in Vegas, but the workarounds are easy. Start at -23LKFS EBUR128 or -24LKFS ATSC/A85. They're nearly the same. Work from there until you like the average system loudness (not "volume").

Want to read up? Start here:
http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_2010-Q3_loudness_Camerer.pdf
;?)