Why doesn’t that answer surprise me?
I can’t provide the material, as this was chart music I had to adapt for a local theater a couple of weeks back.
The material in question was first declipped in Cubase, and was roughly around -20LUFS (with sometimes a DR of over 15!) to -13LUFS prior to the loudness normalization, depending on the production. Everything had to be pulled up/down to -16LUFS, so that the theater tech barely had to do any fader movements.
The Loudness Normalizer (Batch Processor especially) doesn’t limit to -1dBTP - period. Even if the tolerance is pulled down to 0,00dB.
And the Batch Audio Analysis module was always about 3-5dB off in terms of the dBTP readout after everything was normalized. (again, I checked this with EBU Loudness by ToneBoosters) The batch processor chain was: Loudness Normalizer → Audio Analyzer. The CSV file it dropped, showed offset values.
Regarding the “Meter offset” in the WAV editor - you probably already heard of my K-System v2 concept which is built upon the EBU R-128/ITU-R BS.1770-x specs (though only uses a custom reference level, and a different color coding system). But setting a custom reference level (i.e. -16LUFS, -14LUFS, etc) results in an up to 2dB offset on both the MLk and SLk meter compared to third party tools (Nugen Audio, ToneBoosters, etc).
You know of this report for over 1 year at this point. I also sent that in through mail and never(!) got an answer. As AE, that is RELIANT on exact metering tools, this is an absolute NO-NO.
You also know of the infamous VST3 Audio Forward Bug that you shrugged off on to the developers (same answer as well “not our fault, it’s a third party developer issue”).
I didn’t get any answer to my Wavelab support inquiry mails, and Steinberg is a German company. Sometimes I do have the impression, that things are ignored on purpose. And Wavelab is a Mastering tool where metering is essential - it has to be precise (remember how many Wavelab versions it took until the K-System meter was correct?! - same issue this time around with the EBU R-128 realtime meter). Yet issues are ignored or pushed on to the next paid version (my FR to implement RMS avg and RMS max readout for the Batch Analysis module for example - RMS is not important, but EBU R-128, DC offset and various peak types is?! - and let’s not talk about surround support and AAC rendering in the same realm - 2.0 is a dying format).
I was always confident and hoped “these issues will be fixed in the next version”, and silently continued to invest more money. I am not(!) supporting this anymore. Disappointing support. no demos, disimprovements with every consecutive version on terms of what worked before… This is frustrating, and I’m with WL since WL3(!), Cubase even longer (since mid 1990ies) - so I have my 20 years full of being a “Steinberg” member.
Is that enough information for you now?
Or will this be disregarded as any issue and tagged as “solved”?
How will we go from there?
And why didn’t I get ANY answer to my support inquiry via the support engine?!
I thought the Steinberg boards are no support section, hence the user account.
I can only repeat myself - this is frustrating.