Mac OS: Peak watcher and measuring true peak

[tbdalgaard]

This looks almost as the first comment in issue #680 where the screenreader will not stop when the threshold is triggered.

How to reproduce:

1. Create a track
2. Press alt-w.
3. Select first watcher from the context menu.
4. Go to the combobox and select: true peak dBTP
5. Select the option: Notify automatically for channels: for (ms):
6. Input a low value like -30 db in the next edit field.
7. In the milliseconds field enter: 2000
8. Press OK and try to trigger the watcher.

What I have found is the following:

• When the level is reached my screenreader repeats the value. For instance: minus 0,5. This is is repeated over and over again until I reset the watcher manually by pressing alt-F10. It will not work to disable the watcher. If I press alt-w, activate the first watcher and hit: Disable, the value is still spoken and the loudness meeter is still present as an effect on the track. So manually reset is the most effective way to get silence from the screenreader.
• If I use both first and second watcher and watch the master track as either one of the peak watchers I find that Reaper becomes quite slow. I think the loudness meeter uses a lot of power to operate, especially if the master track is watched.

Please let me know if I can test any change of settings from in Reaper in order to fix this, I am not sure this entirely is a bug.

[jcsteh]

When the level is reached my screenreader repeats the value. For instance: minus 0,5. This is is repeated over and over again

Is it repeated according to the hold time you set - i.e. 2000 ms - or are you saying it's faster than that?

It looks like the Loudness Meter itself "holds" the peak value forever. When OSARA's hold time elapses, it retrieves the value again, but it's still the same value because the Loudness Meter is holding that value. That's... really not ideal.

It will not work to disable the watcher. If I press alt-w, activate the first watcher and hit: Disable, the value is still spoken and the loudness meeter is still present as an effect on the track.

This seems like a separate issue and I can't reproduce this one, so perhaps it's Mac specific, though I don't know why. When you press disable, does the dialog close? After that, if you try to report the watcher, does OSARA say "watcher disabled" or does it report a value? And does alt+w still show it as configured?

* If I use both first and second watcher and watch the master track as either one of the peak watchers I find that Reaper becomes quite slow. I think the loudness meeter uses a lot of power to operate, especially if the master track is watched.

I don't think there's anything OSARA can do about this. I assume you don't see a similar performance problem if you use peak dB instead of true peak? (Peak dB doesn't use Loudness Meter.)

[tbdalgaard]

Is it repeated according to the hold time you set - i.e. 2000 ms - or are you saying it's faster than that?

It respects the hold time I set, but the information is only the value. If I use peak instead I will hear first or second channel 0.5 as expected.

It looks like the Loudness Meter itself "holds" the peak value forever. When OSARA's hold time elapses, it retrieves the value again, but it's still the same value because the Loudness Meter is holding that value. That's... really not ideal.

No, I just confirmed this by setting true peak to -10 and hold time for 5 seconds. When I stopped playback the value was repeated each 5th second even when no audio was playing. Is that a bug or expected behaviour?

Den 4. aug. 2022 kl. 11.47 skrev James Teh @.***>:

When the level is reached my screenreader repeats the value. For instance: minus 0,5. This is is repeated over and over again

Is it repeated according to the hold time you set - i.e. 2000 ms - or are you saying it's faster than that?

It looks like the Loudness Meter itself "holds" the peak value forever. When OSARA's hold time elapses, it retrieves the value again, but it's still the same value because the Loudness Meter is holding that value. That's... really not ideal.

It will not work to disable the watcher. If I press alt-w, activate the first watcher and hit: Disable, the value is still spoken and the loudness meeter is still present as an effect on the track.

This seems like a separate issue and I can't reproduce this one, so perhaps it's Mac specific, though I don't know why. When you press disable, does the dialog close? After that, if you try to report the watcher, does OSARA say "watcher disabled" or does it report a value? And does alt+w still show it as configured?

• If I use both first and second watcher and watch the master track as either one of the peak watchers I find that Reaper becomes quite slow. I think the loudness meeter uses a lot of power to operate, especially if the master track is watched. I don't think there's anything OSARA can do about this. I assume you don't see a similar performance problem if you use peak dB instead of true peak? (Peak dB doesn't use Loudness Meter.)

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