OK, I'm showing my age, but does anyone else miss power meters? I remember in the day of 300 WPC super receivers, they always seemed to have analog power meters, and later LED and flourescent meters.
As long as you had the option to switch them out with a "direct" mode, wouldn't it be just a little cool to have 5 or 7 vertical meters on the front display? Nothing garish....
Buy some McIntosh stuff or Sunfire etc and you will get some of the best looking meters going! I like the meters to. They are probably the most inaccurate thing going but they look nice. Especially the McIntosh stuff!
And then you get to add VU Ballistics to your list of things to set up!
Bren R.
In reply to:
VU Ballistics
i get most of your comebacks, but i am totally lost on this one.. what are you talking about??
BTW- i dig the meters too.. i had a friend in the military who had an old Carver amp with the big needle gauges.. pretty cool..
bigjohn
A VU meter/PPM meter in a professional environment has to be tested for response time - there are tone generators to do this.
A VU Ballistics check is a sine wave at -12dBFS (or other reference level if it's different in your studio) gated on and off at 300ms intervals. For a VU meter to be passed, it's got to stay within 1dB of 0 on the scale.
A PPM ballistics check I think is on for 10ms and off for 1000ms (1 sec), I don't remember the exact "pass" criteria (I think it's got to JUST slip into the yellow band and not 0 out before the next pulse, but don't quote me on that).
VU meters register perceived loudness, PPM meters register peak performance.
So, if we all had these meters, we'd all be testing them on a daily basis to make sure they were accurate.
Bren R.
I lust for my Dad's McIntosh amp with the purty blue-green meters.
I have an old LED power meter on the receiver that drives my subs actually. I've found it extremely useful over the years.
