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 every channel of your active speaker layout in Multichannel 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:

• Multichannel mode: per-channel metering for your active speaker layout. This follows whatever OSLS layout you've selected — 12 channels for 7.1.4, or the full channel count of a wider rig (for example 14 for 10.1.4, or many more for a large custom layout). The block is labelled with the layout's name, and wide layouts wrap onto multiple rows.
• 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 7.1.4 speaker feed alongside binaural output.
• Apple Spatial Audio mode: Left and right binaural output meters showing the stereo signal after Apple's HRTF processing (with the virtualized 7.1.4 reference feed available the same way as in Binaural mode).
• 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.

Multichannel metering scales to your layout

The multichannel meter block follows your selected OSLS layout. Smaller rigs show a single labelled block; large layouts wrap onto multiple rows, each with a channel-range label.

A large custom rig — here a 52-channel "50.2 Periphonic Sphere" — wraps across labelled rows (Ch 1–21, Ch 22–42, Ch 43–52):

Binaural and Apple Spatial

Binaural and Apple Spatial Audio show the L/R output, with an optional virtualized 7.1.4 reference block and the binaural limiter's gain-reduction (GR) readout:

Stereo

Stereo fold-down shows a simple L/R pair:

For loudness measurement (LUFS, true peak, LRA) and the Powered by Cota engine, see Loudness.

Meter colours

Here at Orbit Spatial we believe app customisation matters — yet very few apps let you change the colour of your meters. We thought, why not? So Orbit ships with a range of beautiful meter colours to suit your taste.

Open Preferences → Meters and pick a Meter Theme. Your choice applies everywhere meters appear, in every monitoring mode.

The Standard theme is the position-fixed green-to-red gradient described above. The remaining themes recolour the meters while keeping the same scale, peak-hold, and clipping behaviour:

Blue

Pink

Green

Purple

Yellow

TIP

The theme is purely cosmetic — peak-hold indicators, clipping, and the underlying dB mapping are identical across every colour, so switching themes never changes what the meters are telling you.

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