Blackmagic Forum

Hey guys, I have a question. I love using Davinci Resolve, I used to use Adobe Premiere, but I like Resolve better, especially the Fairlight page. One problem is that I am having trouble with my audio levels. I make all the background music for my videos with FL Studio 20, and I always try to keep my rms around -7db, with peak at -2db max. When I bring it into Resolve though, it does not seem any louder in my headphones, (which I always keep at 50% volume), but it shows up on the levels meter as around +14db rms and peaks around +20db! I decided to do a controlled experiment to see what was going on. I generated a 1000 hz sine wave in fl studio, leveled it to be at a constant -6db for about 10 seconds, and exported it as an uncompressed wave file. Just to make sure, I imported the wave file into a new FL Studio project, and sure enough, it was exactly -6db in the mixer. Next, I imported the wave file into Davinci Resolve, and opened up the fairlight page. I went to the meters and clicked start under the blue meter closest to the video preview window, and it showed up as +15db! It sounded the same but the meter told me it should be distorting to an unearthly level! Am I using that little blue meter wrong? Is it showing regular decibels or is it some other kind of meter? I'm trying to have my final video's audio output to be -7db rms and -2db peak for my theatrical work and -3db rms and -1db peak for my YouTube videos, but I can't tell which is right, the FL Studio mixer and decibel bar, or the blue meter on the far right of resolve's fairlight mixer! What do you guys think? Any help is appreciated! Thanks,

-Weston

(And by the way, I have not changed any audio settings at all, and I'm using the stable version of Davinci Resolve 15, but I was having the same problem in Resolve 14.)

I would suggest reading the relevant pages in the user manual. It will help understand the Fairlight metering.

Loudness Metering guidance:
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=76411#p422973

Don't take this the wrong way, but listen with your ears instead of your eyes.

There are a whole lot of different ways meters can be calibrated. Depending on that calibration, the same signal can look wildly different.

You are hearing the same sound and levels but you are just seeing it differently. Depending how you set the meters in DR it will give you a different method of measuring. I use LUFS and set the target to be around -16 for YouTube or -23 for TV levels.