Even More Music Meters
The concluding video of a two parter rounding up the music meters and visualisers I've bought over the last couple of years.
Of course since putting this together I've acquired a couple more, but that's something for another day.
Comments (27)
I bought one of the Muzio meters, after seeing it on Techmoan. As Mat says, it's an interactive lava lamp, but all the better for it, in my scrub-opinion.
Thank you for finding that VFD one. Price and quality seem incredibly good. And it looks beautiful.
I must get a Dorrough in the studio when I'm mixing live Premiership football. It give a great indication of the overall listener experience.
I would never grow tired of VU meters. The analogue one looks like a remake of the Realistic APM-100 from Tandy. In 1982 it cost 62,50 guilders, what would make 58 euro’s in today’s money. Thanks for getting me the idea of searching for old Tandy catalogs. It’s really fun to browse them once in a while.
http://radioshackcatalogs.com US-centric, as you might imagine, though they do have some Canadian catalog(ue)s. Dunno if he has any from other markets.
As much as I like the look of the Dorrough, I fear it's industry use made it an enabler to the 'loudness wars' - a big thumbs down from me. The video is as usual excellent and gets the thumbs up from me.
Indeed the loudness war is probably what killed off VU meters also on consumer equipment. From playing various modern and old pop songs with a software VU Meter (which mimics the Lithuania one), the needle varies from -20 to +3 throughout most 1980s and earlier music, but gets stuck between +2 and +3 throughout many modern chart songs.
I'd be soooo tempted to put all of these meters and the audio oscilloscope on one shelf and have them all going at once. I love my Plex setup and it's cool to have album art and track info on my TV but I miss having those bright flickering lights dancing to the music.
Forgive the dumb question, but: Other than the Dorrough, are the plug-in meters driven by line or speaker voltages?
All these ones are line-level.
Love stuff like this, I guess that's why we're all here. many thanks and keep smiling enjoy the cruise
On the LaMetric, look in the app, you can make it show only 1 page so it doesn't go between other pages.
I use that feature to display the subscriber count in the background - but when playing music to it, it seemed to default back to the clock after a while. Not an issue for me though as it’s a terrible Bluetooth speaker - my phone’s internal speaker sounds better.
OK, that Muzio thing is certainly frivolous, which is why I'll probably buy one.
I could watch one of those every week. Well done and visually pleasing.
I remember in high school electronics class in the late 1970s building a "mood lamp", which if I remember correctly consisted of 3 power transistors, some other bits, and some 25w incandescent lamps. And I proudly mounted it all in a perspex box. Problem was, I'm not sure the design was quite right, because the fuse kept blowing. Bit of a disappointment. So I turned to a life of substance abuse, crime and short term relationships as a result. Just kidding. No crime involved.
Same, but I think ours was a "color organ" (OK, it was Canada, so "colour organ"). Ours had 120 V ac outlets so you could plug in colo(u)red floodlights. Same circuit, I'm sure. Amazingly, I don't recall anyone in my late-1970s high school electronics class being electrocuted.
Mat, do you have a favorite meter, one that is a permanent fixture of your home stereo system, or do you maybe rotate different ones in and out as the mood strikes you?
Ironically I don't have the space or the spare outputs on my HiFi to wire any of these in, However there's plenty of displays already on the components, so I'm not missing out completely.
As the guy who nudged you not to forget the La Metric, ‘tis for confirming that the display is correctly showing the audio sweeps. I didn’t have any test tapes available, but of late I’ve been using this mode more when playing with my Sonos (as it will also show Music tag data) - which makes the whole package so much more useful!
I like the spectrum analyzer. Even though it doesn't have frequency markings, anyone with an equalize, a pink noise source and even a half way knowledge of the spectrum could use this to E.Q. a venue, like a church and get pretty good results. Thanks for the info. Again, enjoy your vacation.
I'm a huge fan of any visual display for music. Makes the experience more enjoyable in my opinion. Great vid!
Enjoy your holiday cruise, Mat.
I have a sudden urge to buy a VFD kit and go tinker with it.
Nice! Since I got my first Sony graphic equalizer in the 80s I'm also a big fan of VU-meters, graphic analyzers, etc. Love the ones on my Revox tape recorders. Even my Akai EIE audio interface. I think using acrylic round sheets like the last product would suit perfectly to the Stereo NeoPixel Ring VU Meter project I created. The link is here if you're interested: https://www.hackster.io/ericBcreator/stereo-neopixel-ring-vu-meter-b28e78 The benefit being I can edit the code to the effects and colors I like. I'm waiting for the next video!
Wow isn't this the 4th video on vu meters you have uploaded? You must really like these things. I do like these videos though!
Yes, and its very likely the last. You’ll be glad to know that this topic is probably exhausted.