Different average RMS value between recent version of Adobe Audition and Adobe Audition 3.0

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 11, 2024
2 replies
308 views

Why is the calculation method for the average RMS value different between the most recent version of Adobe Audition that I am currently using and the previous Adobe Audition 3.0? The results calculated from the same file in each program turn out differently. Please explain how the calculation methods differ in each version and which one provides the accurate value.

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hyunsoo JeongAuthor

Participant

Hello Guys.

when I checked this issue by myself, I made one script file by Matlab and I can find something different between different versions. As someone mentioned windowing, I applied that method and second, I just applied just full data of file iteslf without any windowing. If I applied the 10ms of window to calculate the Average RMS, I can find same results of Adobe Audition 3.0, but if I applied the square and mean on the data, I can get very similar value of the latest version of Audtion. So, It seems that they have modified the algorithm to always work with a single file and scan specific portions of that file to calculate the average RMS. While using a 10ms windowing method is very useful in real-time applications, Audition does not provide the feature for real-time average RMS calculation. Instead, it only allows for reading the entire data set or scanning specific sections to calculate the average RMS for those sections. I believe this is the reason for their algorithm change. This is just my opinion, and I’m not sure if it is correct or not...

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michelle_4392

Participant

Hello!

The difference in average RMS value calculations between Adobe Audition versions is due to changes in the algorithms used. The newer version likely uses a different method, such as time-windowing, which can result in slightly different values. Unfortunately, Adobe doesn't disclose the exact formulas, so it's hard to say which one is more accurate.

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hyunsoo JeongAuthor

Participant

Of course, fully understand, but the results is not slightly different. It's huge. for example, the value measured in 3.0 showed -26dBFS, but same file can be measured in recent Audition as -51dBFS. So it's too big. Confused. which one is correct? Even if the method of the algorithm cannot be opened, I think there should be at least a minimum explanation of how it has changed, or which is more accurate, or that a certain part has changed.

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

I'm afraid that Michelle is essentially incorrect in her assertions. The algorithm for calculating RMS values hasn't changed at all - it's defined as taking the root of the mean value squared over a given windowing period. It's done this way - universally - to give always positive absolute results, which are displayed as a level below 0dB, hence the minus sign.

I checked the same file out on Audition 3 and the current version. The results were identical except for the average RMS value, which seemed to be rather far astray, by about 19dB. Which got me wondering. I looked at the file I was using, and it has several seconds of silence at the end of it. Removing that silence and rescanning gave a much more reasonable total RMS figure. I tried exactly the same thing on Audition 3 and got a much smaller jump in value.

What does this mean? (pun intended). What it implies is that Audition 3 only gives an accurate result when there's no large silences in a track. The silences - quite correctly - alter the average signal value across the file quite significantly, and Audition 3 doesn't pick this up correctly. This has been corrected at some point, and it means that you get more accurate values from any of the more recent releases.

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