reVUe

reVUe is an advanced digital recreation of the classic VU meter, offering a window into perceived loudness that's simple, satisfying, and sonically meaningful. Whether you're adjusting balance, gauging vocal presence, or just enjoying the sight of a whole console's worth of meters moving like a well-oiled machine, it might well become a valued part of your mixing toolkit.

Some digital VU recreations are just a bit twitchy and not much fun, like a peak meter but less precise. A real VU tells a real story; not the dry truth but what the truth feels like.

reVUe reacts like it should, with response characteristics guided by the original 1940s broadcast specification and refined using modern analysis of real program material. The originators of the VU specification understood that ballistics are the key; the meter should reach 99% of its target value 300ms after the sudden onset of a signal, with 1-1.5% of overswing, and then be hand tuned to give a smooth needle excursion, avoiding 'jittery' motion, but immediate and responsive reaction to transient material:

• Massively resizable (just grab the bottom right corner) ... from a thumbnail to filling an entire screen.
• Finely tuned and calibrated, immediately ready for use. If you need it then calibration can be set from 0 to -30dBFS (defaults to -18dBFS) and is stored per plugin instance.
• Accurate display of loudness for stereo sources using an RMS average; consistent readings for any equal-power panned elements in a mix, regardless of their position in the stereo field.
• Overshoot at both ends, and no clip indication; because the meaning is in the movement.

"This value is a purely empirical thing, evolved to meet a practical need... because of the rapidly changing character of the program wave, the dynamic characteristics of the instrument are fully as important as the value of sine-wave power used for calibration."

"A New Standard Volume Indicator and Reference Level " (Chinn, Gannett, Morris, 1940).