Meters & Levels

Orbit's meters help you verify that levels are healthy and the mix is behaving as expected. They adapt to your monitoring mode — showing 12 channels in 7.1.4 mode, or simple L/R meters in binaural and stereo — so you always see what's relevant to your current output.

Meter types

Meters adapt to the current monitoring mode:

• 7.1.4 mode: 12-channel metering for the full speaker layout.
• Binaural mode: Left and right binaural output meters showing the actual signal after HRTF processing. Enable View → Show Virtualized 7.1.4 Meters in Binaural Mode to see the underlying speaker feed alongside binaural output.
• Apple Spatial Audio mode: Left and right binaural output meters showing the stereo signal after Apple's HRTF processing.
• Stereo mode: Left and right stereo fold-down meters.

Meters use position-fixed gradient colouring (green to yellow to orange to red) mapped to absolute dB levels, with peak hold indicators (1.5-second hold time with decay) and vertical channel labels.

All meters update in real-time during playback and scrubbing.

Loudness metering

Expand the Loudness panel in the sidebar to monitor ITU-R BS.1770-4 loudness measurements. Use the Source menu to choose:

• Session: Live measurements from the active monitoring output with Integrated, Short-term, Momentary LUFS, and True Peak (L/R) plus Reset.
• Programme: ADM-supplied loudness metadata (Integrated, Max Short-term/Momentary/True Peak) plus LRA and Dialogue when present. These values stay fixed for the loaded ADM.

Session measurements reflect the active monitoring output, so you can verify compliance in any mode. Meters read pre-gain, so readings are independent of the monitoring volume fader. Use Reset to clear live measurements and restart from the current playback position.

In binaural and Apple Spatial Audio modes, loudness metering measures the 2-channel binaural output rather than the internal 7.1.4 speaker feeds. This is useful as a reference, but should not be used for QC or delivery compliance.

True peak LFE toggle

A toggle below the True Peak meter lets you switch between excl. LFE (the BS.1770-4 standard default) and incl. LFE for a full-range measurement across all channels. This is useful when your delivery spec requires true peak across all channels including the subwoofer.

PDF loudness report

The advanced PDF export includes a Measured Loudness section with Orbit's offline analysis: integrated LUFS, true peak (excl. and incl. LFE), loudness range (LRA), max momentary, and max short-term — plus a time-series graph showing momentary and short-term loudness over the full duration of the file.

Metering accuracy

Orbit's loudness metering is validated against industry-standard tools to ensure QC-grade accuracy.

Automated test suite: 18 unit tests cover integrated LUFS at multiple levels, silence handling, inter-sample true peak detection, K-weighting frequency response, surround channel weighting (1.41x gain), LFE exclusion, momentary/short-term loudness, and meter reset behaviour. An additional 6 cross-validation tests compare Orbit's measurements directly against ffmpeg's ebur128 filter.

ffmpeg cross-validation results:

Test Signal	Orbit	ffmpeg	Difference
400 Hz sine, -20 dBFS	-20.75 LUFS	-20.70 LUFS	0.05 dB
1 kHz sine, -14 dBFS	-14.05 LUFS	-14.00 LUFS	0.05 dB
400 Hz sine, -40 dBFS	-40.75 LUFS	-40.70 LUFS	0.05 dB

All measurements fall within the EBU R128 conformance tolerance of ±0.1 LU.

INFO

Orbit does not use Dolby's proprietary dbmd metadata chunk. It renders ADM content using its own VBAP-based engine built on the open ADM standard.

What to check

• Peaks and clipping during loud sections.
• LFE activity only when expected.
• Bed vs object balance across the programme.
• Loudness compliance with delivery specifications.

Practical tips

• Compare meters across monitoring modes to catch translation issues.
• Use solo and mute controls to isolate problem elements.
• Reset loudness measurements when checking specific sections.

TIP

If you see unexpected peaks, revisit the same timecode in a different monitoring mode to confirm the source.

Meter scales

Change the scale via View → Meter Scale. The default is Digital Peak.

DAW-style meters

These meters show 0 as clipping (full scale):

Scale	Range	Use for
Digital Peak	-60 to 0 dBFS	General DAW work
True Peak	-60 to +3 dBFS	Checking inter-sample peaks
Peak Wide	-72 to 0 dBFS	Classical/film (more dynamic range)

Broadcast meters

These meters show 0 as nominal (reference) level:

Scale	Reference	Use for
EBU R128	-18 dBFS	European broadcast
BBC PPM	-18 dBFS	BBC-style broadcast
K-20	-20 dBFS	Wide dynamics (film/classical)
K-14	-14 dBFS	Music mixing
K-12	-12 dBFS	Streaming/commercial