For this tutorial, I'm using the Audio workspace.
You can reset that workspace by clicking on the Workspace's Panel menu and choosing Reset to Saved Layout.
Audio level is measured in decibels often described as dB.
Audio level has a maximum of 0 dB which is the loudest signal that can be recorded or produced.
The scale then goes down into the negative until it reaches the so-called noise floor where system noise is louder than the signal.
At this point, the signal is effectively, infinitely quiet, and so the infinity symbol is sometimes used on scales.
Anything over 0 dB means you're boosting the signal which many types of effect and level adjustment can do.
I'm going to play this sequence which is pretty simple.
We've got some dialogue and some background music.
And I'm going to bring the level down, so that you can hear me while it's playing back.
Ordinarily, this would be a little bit louder.
Here in Premiere Pro CC, we've got our Audio Meters panel.
We've got a scale starting with 0 at the top.
And well it's actually about - 60 dB at the bottom.
And as the audio plays, you can see the level is displayed on the meters.
There's a lot of debate about how loud you should make your audio.
And, of course, you can use the Essential Sound panel to set some levels automatically.
But whatever level you have, in this case, because we're playing back a sequence, we're getting the combined mix displayed on the Audio Meters here.
If we were playing back a clip, we'd get the level for the clip; that's in the source monitor, of course.
You'll notice at the bottom of the Audio Meter, we have these S buttons; these are for soloing.
I'll just move the Play head back a bit and play again; I'm using the Spacebar here.
Here, I'm soloing the left channel, and now the right channel.
This just makes it easier for you to identify what's going on in the mix.
You won't often need to solo channels, but the option is there.
You'll have noticed already, we're also getting level meters in the Audio Clip Mixer.
If I right click on the Audio Meters, I've got the option to change the dynamic range that's displayed.
Here, I'll choose 96 dB Range, for example.
And you can see I just get a longer scale.
This doesn't change your audio, but it does change the way you monitor your audio.
It could be useful if you're working with quieter source material.
I'll just change that back.
I'll press Play again here for a moment.
And I want to draw your attention to these little yellow lines that are appearing at the top of the Audio Meter where the level's displayed.
These are the peaks - the loudest part of the audio in that moment, but they disappear pretty quickly.
So, I'm going to right click and turn on Static Peaks instead of Dynamic Peaks.
And now if I press Play, you can see those peaks persist.
It just makes it easier for you to see what's going on with your audio.
In fact, if I right click and turn on Show Valleys, I'm just selecting it in the menu here.
And press Play again, you can see we get an additional line which shows the minimum level.
Because there is background music in the sequence, we're always going to have some kind of level.
So, we're never going to go right the way down into silence.
Again, I'll right click, and I want to draw your attention to this Show Color Gradient option.
I'll turn this off for a moment, and click back into the sequence, and Play again.
And you can see we're getting a clean color here.
And then a clean color of yellow as the audio gets louder.
You'll see this goes into the red if you're in danger of overriding which just means that you might be getting a little bit too close to 0 dB.
At which point you begin to lose audio fidelity - the sound starts to break up.
And that's because you're pushing the audio level beyond the range of this recording system.
I'll turn the Show Color Gradient back on, so you can see the result here.
It doesn't really change the way the audio is displayed all that much, but it does make those peaks a little bit easier to detect.
You see there we're losing that clean edge for the yellow level.
Again, nothing you do in the Audio Meters is going to change the way your audio sounds.
But it's a very important part of the interface for you to be able to understand what's happening with your mix.
