Alesis ALESIS M20 owner manual M

ALESIS M20 REFERENCE MANUAL 1.06 7-1
CHAPTER 7
METERING
With digital recording, it is very important not to exceed the available headroom (and with
20 bits to play with, you have so much dynamic range that there’s no need to push it). The
M20 provides three different metering modes to make it easier to avoid overloads.
7.1 METER MODE SELECTION
The Peak Mode button cycles through three different meter modes:
• No Peak Hold. Meter levels reflect the current input signal levels.
• Momentary Peak Hold (default). Although the meter reflects the current input
signal, the meter also retains the peak level briefly. This is useful if the signal to be
recorded has short transients, which you might miss seeing when they occur.
• Continuous Peak Hold. The meter also reflects the current input signal, but retains
the highest peak until cleared. Thus, if you can’t monitor a track continuously during
the recording process, you can look at the meter after the recording is over to see the
highest recorded peak.
As you cycle through these options, the main display briefly shows the selected mode.
7.1A CLEARING PEAKS
With continuous peak hold, you will eventually want to clear the peak level indicators on all
8 channels. Press Peak Clear to reset the meters.