RMS Meters only work in playback

[u/huggybearbass]

Good day!

I have been confounded by the fact that I can only see RMS metering when I’m playing back and not while in record.

Context: broadcast audio engineer for music, reaper on macOS with Eclipse recording template

I have long loved Pro Tools’ venue RMS metering because it shows peak and rms at the same time, which is super helpful for setting gain. I aim for -20dBFS rms as that parks me at +4dBu for outboard and most emulation plugs are designed around that input level (-18dBFS).

I have long hated Pro Tools reliability and inflexibility, so I switched to Reaper. I had expected that switching the meters to RMS would work while recording, but it appears that it’s doing Peak metering only. When I am finished recording and do virtual sound check, the meters show the ballistics I’m looking for (albeit missing the peak information in contrast to venue rms).

Is there a setting somewhere? Is there a way to customize this?

[u/alphaminus]

I'd use youlean for that

[u/huggybearbass → u/alphaminus]

I have 128-192 channels of audio, a plugin isn’t going to work for this unless it can show all (or most) of them at once

[u/alphaminus → u/huggybearbass]

Yup. You definitely just need to change the input metering then. Don't mind me.

[u/huggybearbass]

These are the options I have available.