BBC PPM

I want an option where the bouncing sound meters mimic BBC PPM ballistics.

Instant attack and sloppy relax. Much easier to see where you are instead of trying to watch a rapidly vibrating standard meter.

Koz

For my money I’d love old-fashioned VU meters

See: https://www.tbproaudio.de/products/mvmeter2

I can get this plug-in to work for playback - but obviously not for recording (as plug-ins can’t be applied while recording)
VU meter.png
Peter.

Personally I’m happy with the standard meters as this type of metering is now pretty standard on most affordable hardware desks.

They say that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but plug-ins / add-ons go a long way towards doing so.

Short demo of “jmeter” ballistics: https://youtu.be/We28TsQbs7Y

Is there not something similar available for macOS?

For my money I’d love old-fashioned VU meters

Maybe you haven’t been burned enough times.

NBC-VU-IMG_0456-500T.jpg
I used to be a fan of VU meters, or more accurately, “VU Damped Sound Meters,” until I got officially corrected as to their use for the television air show. That was a wake-up call. Then it turns out anyone can stamp “VU” on a meter and can call it good, except for a failure to match anything else with VU stamped on it, and certainly not matching the original VU specification.

No, that ship sailed.

I agree current meters are mostly OK and it’s nice that they all match, even if it’s just because it’s more expensive to do anything else.

I don’t even want that oddity of BBC PPMs of ignoring high pitched, brief overmodulations as “nobody is going to hear those anyway.”

Nope. I want an option to apply the PPM ballistics to our normal meters. Rapid attack and slow recovery. No need to get used to a whole new meter.

“Beware of exceeding PPM 6.”

Words to live by.

Koz

I see one of those options has a marker that “hangs” roughly where a PPM would have hung had it been there. That would work.

I love electronics that work in the subjunctive.

Koz

Steve wrote:

Is there not something similar available for macOS?

There are several, but due to the Audacity problem, all report the wrong levels.

For Linux, I’m also a fan of Jmeters, although these days, using VU or PPM meters on live TV
is risky, LUFS is the way to go.

These are the units we use:

Screen Shot 2021-07-26 at 8.29.35 PM.png
As a test, in two of the studios, I also have small nix boxes running Ebumeter in realtime.
The results so far are very promising.
Again, there are ebu meters available for Mac and Windows, but don’t work properly in Audacity
and not realtime.

TCL also make some, but have never used them.