Manual

82 FINALIZER Desktop Application User Manual
13. Monitor Output
The Monitor Output is dierent from the audio track Export and Master Meter, in that it features dierent monitor-only options like a monitor output fader, Dim, Mono Sum,
plus the important Loudness Compensation. Audition functionality, such as soloing a band in the multiband compressors, is also only routed to the Monitor Output.
13.1 Monitoring with Loudness Compensation
The only good way to get solid and consistent mastering results is to judge spectral and dynamical dierences at an equal loudness level. Otherwise we may initially
be drawn to prefer the loudest, which is one of the issues underlying the Loudness War and a route taken only with great caution.
The Loudness button in the Monitor section will automatically make everything (A, B, REF) equally loud and identical to the Prepared Normalization Level while
playing back without the need to adjust a lot of gains. The background analysis calculates the correct compensation gains.
Note that the Loudness compensation only applies to the monitor signal - and the meters and SDC view etc. The Loudness compensation will never aect the
processing that is exported to le. Also note that the AVG view is always loudness compensated and is not aected by the Loudness button in the Monitor section.
When you are at the nal stage of mastering where you need to compare at the actual and intended output level, you should disable the Loudness Compensation. Now
the Reference les have the original loudness level, and the project audio le output level can be dened using the Limiter gain or loudness parameters.
Tip:
• Calibrated monitoring levels: Using constant and calibrated monitor controller volume settings, will complement the Loudness Compensation, in the strive to do
consistent evaluation of your work, based on a constant monitoring Sound Pressure Level.
• The current setting of Loudness Compensation, Mono Sum and so on, in the Monitor Section will never aect what is printed to le with the Export Module.
The example below shows a typical Monitor Output display:
• Loudness Compensation: When activated, all audio including A, B and REF les, are loudness-normalized to the Prepare Module Normalize Level. This is essential
for judging all changes made, without the need for ne tuning a lot of gain parameters.
• Mono Sum: will make a mono version of the signal with the same level as its stereo version.