Vu/PPM meter

[jdbakker]

Using a micro to drive a mechanical meter is clearly the wrong tool for the job... There isn't much bneefit to working in the digital domain, to output to a mechanical meter.

If you have enough time on your hands you can use a microcontroller to change a meter's ballistics, to change any random meter into a proper VU (or PPM) meter. I've done it once, and while it works fairly well it takes a lot of finicky work with step impulses, a strobe light, a camera and non-linear modeling...

JD "life's too short" B.

 

[Moses]

Hahaha! Yeah, that does sound pretty tedious JD!

Just wrapped up a pair of Jewel Instruments (from a Studer...) 1ma movements into a cardboard box with the JLM meter buffers as the start of my experiment...

Fully intend for the JLM boards to be replaced with a PCB/Vero of various 'borrowed' bits of different circuits in the next wee while! SO many projects on the cards tho!!

mo 

 

[JohnRoberts]

Using a micro to drive a mechanical meter is clearly the wrong tool for the job... There isn't much bneefit to working in the digital domain, to output to a mechanical meter.

If you have enough time on your hands you can use a microcontroller to change a meter's ballistics, to change any random meter into a proper VU (or PPM) meter. I've done it once, and while it works fairly well it takes a lot of finicky work with step impulses, a strobe light, a camera and non-linear modeling...

JD "life's too short" B.

Simultaneously proving the power of micros for doing odd jobs, and shortcomings of mechanical meters for all but slow, average results.  The merit in making the random meters look like true VU is because back in the day, recording engineers had to learn how much windage to apply to slow meters to account for what they didn't show. They needed to be slow in the same way to be used reliably. These days IMO, VU meters are mostly used as eye candy (no offense intended) so precision ballistics are not paramount.

Much easier to just be able to see the faster peak characteristics directly. FWIW, back when I put VU meters on consoles (because the customer is always right), I also put a single red LED next to it in the meter bridge to indicate peaks. 

Once again something that can be done, that doesn't necessarily mean we should... Thanks for doing that JDB so we don't have to. 

JR