I've been having a debate with my fellow editors about the best level to set our tone, and our program audio at. We first tried setting the 1khz tone, in the FCP timeline, at -12db and riding our program audio to bounce around -12 peaking just below -6. This works great when outputting to a DV tape (via firewire to a DSR-45). The program audio and tone level all jive together just fine.

The problem is that we then route the signal out of the DSR-45 to a BetaSP deck (via Component and XLR audio run thru a Mackie VLZ-1402). If we set the audio inputs on the Beta deck to 0db from the tone out of FCP the program audio is then wayyy to low. It bounces around -15 on the Beta deck, nowhere near 0. Which is where it should be, right?

So I found that if I lower the tone in FCP to -24db and zero-in the Beta deck to that then our program audio (at -12 in FCP) bounces right at 0 on the Beta deck. Is this what we should be doing or are we missing something?

Jeff

Avid Audio Tool will read -14 or -20 Db respectively depending on what you choose
FCP Audio Mixer Tones should read at 0
Make sure you calibrate your mixer first. Your mixer should read O when playing tones no matter which software you are using
Tones should read -14 Db on an analog deck
Tones should read -20 Db on digital decks such as Digibeta, D1, D2, DV etc.