Question

I'm new to Studio One. After looking at many DAWs, I purchased Studio One and I'm moving to it from Sonar. 

Here's what I'm observing: I create a new song using the "empty song" template. I drag a -20dBfs 1k sine wave file to a track using the Studio One file browser. I then insert the Brainworx Meter plugin on the track and on the main output. on the track, the meter shows -20db as expected, but on the main it shows -23dB. Where am I loosing 3db? There are no other plugins. I expect to see -20dB at the output, not -23. Am I missing something? I tried the same thing in Sonar and in Cubase and they both show -20dB across the board.

Why is Studio One loosing 3db? Is there an output trim control that defaults to -3dB? What am I missing?

THANKS!

-Bruce

Answer 1

It's the pan law.  If the track is mono the -3 pan law will reduce any signal panned dead center by -3.  Pan it hard left or right or switch it to stereo to see the difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_law