Overloud Gem Comp76 FET Compressor and Limiter Plug-In - Manual (Page 15)

OVERLOUD GEMS TAPEDESK
TAPEDESK CONTROLS AND PARAMETERS
VU METERS - TAPEDESK has three Meters: two from the mixer and one in the tape machine. All three
can be switched between VU or PPM modes.
PPM mode shows peaks because it works with instantaneous levels of the measured signal, so
you would expect to see the needle moving a lot while following the waveform of the processed
audio. PPM meters are used while adjusting
the recording level of an analog machine, so
that the audio won’t saturate the input stage
and let it introduce undesired distortion.
VU mode shows the perceived loudness of the
signal, which is a complex but standard and
well de
fi ned way to show signal levels, focusing more on a kind of “resulting average” level. This
setting for a meter re fl ects more the perceived loudness of measured audio material.
Since both modes are useful in evaluating the characteristics of the processed audio, we support
them both.
A last point is about how these digital meters are con fi gured, they are calibrated to show a level
of 0 VU when fed by a 1 KHz sine wave with a peak level of -14 dBFS. This is the factory setting for
meters. You can change this calibration from the Preferences (see chapter PREFERENCES).
INPUT & MIX - Input trims the signal level on the console bus input channel by also controlling how
much the console’s typical sound will take part in the audio processing. Mix adjusts the level of
the console bus output channel and it works as a level control.
MIC PRE - Enables the mic-pre transformer emulation.
TOLERANCES - Adds a certain amount of drift to the console modeling, to emulate the original’s dis-
crete component tolerances. It’s important to note that having TAPEDESK loaded in a project with
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You can use the tape machine VU meter to control how much you
are saturating the tape. The mix VU meter lets you adjust the
TAPEDESK output level to keep it close to the input level visible on
the input VU meter.