While I haven't said this in this thread yet, mechanical VU meters are a legacy anachronism... They were useful and SOTA at one time, but today pretty much useless for other than signal present. Back in the day, users had to learn how to apply windage to VU readings for different sources. A VU meter on drums would be different than VU meter on vocal or bass.
There is merit in monitoring both peak metering to prevent path saturation, and average metering for relative loudness (while modern technology could make that loudness even more representative of human perception with weighting).
For decades I have advocated displaying both peak and VU simultaneously. That provides even more data (crest factor) from comparing the difference between the two.
While in the past I have sold consoles with a full load of mechanical VU meters (the customer and his money are always right) I challenge anybody to easily monitor all of them at the same time. :
(At least I added red peak LEDs so you could easily identify a hot channel.)
If you want your product to look old, mechanical VU meter eye candy will do that. If you want the meters to actually be useful, I prefer LED peak/ave (simultaneous). There are mechanical peak (PPM) meters and I have even heard of two vane mechanical meters but they get a little funny to read. (and don't even put ave on the second vane, typically L/R or sum/difference).
JR
