Meter Toolbar
The Meter Toolbar, showing the playback and recording meter
The green bar shows the playback level, and the red bar shows recording level.
Monitoring
When you are preparing to record it is useful to monitor the input without actually pressing the record button. This is useful for setting levels and checking that you have the input source that you expect.
There are two ways to turn input monitoring on and off:
- Left-click on the recording meter to turn monitoring on. Click again to turn monitoring off.
- Click on the downward-pointing arrow beside the microphone symbol - the meter drop-down menu appears. Choose "Begin Monitoring" or "Stop Monitoring" as appropriate.
Undocking and Resizing
The meter toolbar can also be undocked and displayed as a window in its own right. It can be resized, giving longer scales for the meters and hence a more accurate view of the volume levels.
ToDo Gale: If practical I think this image would be better if it was horizontal (as most beginners will have it). Thinner font (for the annotated text) would be better.
Recording must be annotated as well, or people won't know what the bars mean. The recording should be up to -6 dB (showing them the ideal sort of level) but showing the clip hold light too from a previous clip. I'd say the clip hold light is mandatory for recording.
What the shades and bars mean
The image below shows the floating vertical meter bar, along with descriptions of the various shades and bars.
