Monitor
The monitor measures two things continuously: whether what arrived was untouched, and whether what leaves stays inside what your design predicted.
Entry transparency
PCM sits on a quantisation grid: 16-bit material in steps of one part in 2^16. Anything applied on the way, a volume change, an equaliser, a rate conversion, knocks it off that grid.
Off grid is a suspicion, not a verdict.
Lossily delivered material such as MP3 or AAC was never on the grid to begin with, so it reads the same way. To be sure, play material whose grid you know, such as a WAV or FLAC file.
Silence is never shown as transparent.
While no window has closed, the verdict is withheld entirely. A path that delivers nothing must not look like a path that delivers everything.
The count does not reset when things improve.
A suspicion stays on the counter even if recent windows are clean, because what you want to know is whether it ever happened.
Out-of-band noise
- It watches the stopband of the resample design that is applied, and compares what is measured against what that design predicts.
- Above the prediction is shown in yellow. Red is reserved for when the amount also exceeds what the DSD output of Bench itself emits by default, which is the point where it becomes worth acting on.
- Harmonic and saturation nodes can put content above the prediction. Below that red threshold it is treated as having no effect on your equipment.
- When the output rate equals the input rate there is no band above it to watch, so the watch is not applicable.
- In DSD the signal is a bitstream rather than PCM, so neither this watch nor the PCM output meters apply.
Spectra, scope and counters
Spectra cost nothing while you are not looking at them: the analysis is stopped, not hidden. Phase is never carried, and the bands are aggregated, so the display cannot be turned back into your audio.