Reaper master bus meter inconsistency

[Armistice]

So as I'm doing these Jongleurs songs, there are a couple which are very quiet / loud in alternating sections, or start off really quiet and end up pretty loud, so I've trying a bit of master buss automation - level and limiter threshold, just to see if I can get the overall mix more consistently loud and stop the urge to reach for the volume control in the car whenever one with a quiet start/section comes on.

And I know I could do all this at a track level but there are too many tracks and too many changes, so I'm attempting it via the master bus.

My starting point is the final flat line master settings of the song originally, and so I increase the volume and decrease the limiter threshold in spots from there. For reasons I don't fully understand, it doesn't matter what I have the limiter ceiling set to, I can still easily clip the meters if I'm not careful, but this isn't the issue.

There's a bit of trial and error when I'm doing this so I'll go through a section, and the meter will clip by say +0.2 dB, so I'll stop it there, go back to the start of the section, and this time when I go past the same point, it doesn't clip at all, and will be -0.3 dB at the same point. Weird. I'm getting a lot of this as I go through this process - up to 1.0 dB difference in consecutive passes of the same section without any adjustments. Makes it somewhat difficult to set levels.

And just when I think I have it about right I do a render and it's clipped.

Any ideas?

[JD01]

Hmmm, to be honest mate... sounds like you're trying for a lazy solution that'll only ever be a compromise.
Think you need to go back in and sort these in the mix.

[Armistice]

Hmmm, to be honest mate... sounds like you're trying for a lazy solution that'll only ever be a compromise.
Think you need to go back in and sort these in the mix.

I don't think so. It's very much in the realm of mastering.

The question was why Reaper shows different meter results on the same passage? The rest is context.

[Greg_L]

I think it's how you have your meters set to read averages vs instant.

Also, clipping doesn't always actually mean clipping. As you approach 0db, DAWs sort of fill in the gaps. As the signal rounds off near zero, you can have little filler artifacts that fill the gaps round out over zero....like +.1 or .2 db. It looks like clipping, but it isn't actual clipping.

[Tadpui]

Ive honestly never played around with automating the master bus. Thats some strange behavior for sure.

I'd probably approach it a bit differently. I'd add a top level folder track and make all of the tracks that need automating to it, then do the automation on that folder. Maybe that'll stage the gain a bit differently so it'll hit your master bus comp/limiter a bit more predictably.

Oh, and you might check and see if your master bus inserts are pre fader or post fader.

[Armistice]

OK, I'll have a look at the master bus meter settings and see what I can see. The main thing I'm automating is the threshold, and it works just fine so long as I can get some consistency in the metering - there's certainly no audible clipping - so I assumed it wasn't "really" clipping.

I did wonder if starting the replay at a different point would have an effect because of the accumulation of noise at that point, but I'm going a fair way back. Thanks [mention]Tadpui[/mention] and [mention]Greg_L[/mention] .

[Tadpui]

[mention]Armistice[/mention] I just realized that I was totally talking out of my butt on the pre/post fader thing in Reaper. I thought there was a way to toggle it (that would seem very Reper-like, wouldn't it?). Apparently all of the FX in Reaper are pre-fader, and if you want post-fader FX you'll have to put a bus or a send after the track.