VU meters on mixer board and main window disagree

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

The VU meters on the mixer board and on the main window seem to disagree, even when they should agree.

Here’s how to reproduce the problem: Create a new project with two mono tracks. On the first one, labeled QUIET, generate a tone using all defaults with 0.2 amplitude. On the second one, labeled LOUD, generate a similar tone but with 0.8 amplitude. Pan QUIET hard left and LOUD hard right, as you might if those two tracks were going to be mixed for stereo. Using either sliders on the tracks or on the mixer board, bring down the levels of both about 8 db so we don’t go into distortion. Now bring up the level of QUIET so the left channel matches the right channel on the VU meters in the main window. Notice that the tracks do not appear to be at the same level on the mixer board, even though the entire left channel is the QUIET track and the entire right channel is the LOUD track.

MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 (18E226)
Audacity 2.3.2.

2

Looks OK to me:
mac.png

3

Hmmm…what do you got that I ain’t got?
MixerBoardVsMainWindow.png

4

You have positive gain in the left channel.
I have unity gain in the left channel.

There’s a bug in Audacity 2.3.2 (it’s fixed in the current 2.3.3 alpha code):

Bug 1582 - Incorrect level shown in Mixer Board meter when track has positive gain
If track gain is reduced below 0 dB, the level displayed in the Mixer Board meter for that track is reduced (as expected), but if the gain is increased above 0 dB the level displayed does not increase.

5

That almost certainly is what’s going on here.

I guess the 2.3.3 alpha isn’t downloadable yet? (The one at https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity-devel.html is apparently 2.3.2rc001.)

Thank you!

6

Not yet, but shouldn’t be long before 2.3.3 RC1. That will be announced here on the forum and on social media when it’s available.