23 Aug
2009
23 Aug
'09
2:44 p.m.
On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 18:26 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
- Bad! Having a VU meter that can be adjusted to allegedly be in sync
with some analogue VU meter never ever will be fine. Compare margin for
your digital meters and the meters on your mixing console by playing the
same song several times, they always will differ a little bit different,
each time you play the song.
Of course they read different things! They are measuring different
things!
The VU is a slow response meter (300ms integration time IIRC)intended to
(badly) track perceived volume, the meters on (most) DAWs are closer to
digital peak meters intended to monitor absolute peak levels. Both are
useful and both have a place.
The differences each time you play are why we leave the thick end of
20db of headroom between 0 VU and 0dbFS, you should (in a production
environment) never be going anywhere near 0dbFS (there is no need for it
in the age of 20+ bit ADC noise floors).
It seems to be dangerous to have such a VU meter.
Why is it dangerous? it tells you something about RMS levels which you
would not otherwise know (peak reading meters provide little guidance as
to perceived volume).
Now, I don't know about this particular implementation (I don't have an
LV2 host to hand), but a good implementation of a VU would not be an
inherently bad thing to have available.
Regards, Dan.