Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Imagine]

Any suggestions for a decent 2 channel analog VU meter?

Thanks

[Fali]

www.sifam.com

[Brian Roth]

Hoyt is another analog meter manufacturer.  I also understand that Triplet is still making VU meters as well.

Bri

[Imagine]

Fali and Brian,

Thanks for the links, but I'm looking for a VU meter, I don't have to built, like the Coleman Audio MB2. I was wondering if any other company made these?.

Thanks.

[Fali]

Sifam, if i'm not mistaken, makes ready to use VU meters. Most of the old Neve VU's were made by Sifam.(based in the UK)
I have a pair at the studio i work at, taken from an old neve console.

Try getting in touch with their local dealers and speak with them directly.

[Gary Flanigan]

Dorrough makes quite a few.  Not cheap, but great quality.

[dave-G]

Besides the Coleman you mentioned, the Dorroughs are great, Crookwood makes a very nice stereo VU meter package, and Logitek have several options.

-dave

[jfrigo]

In addition to those mentioned above, Benchmark has one. Some seem more expensive than they need to be however. I got the Coleman and it's working out well. They have a rack mountable 4 meter box, but I got the little plastic box with the pair so I could discard the box and put the meters in a custom monitor console. Also, the Crookwood stuff looks very cool. Crispin knows his business. Definitely worth checking out.

[seriousfun]

We make an eight-channel unit, for surround work, and we use the same Vu meter in our MSS-10 microphone preamplifier (single-channel, one meter per).

From our experience, the companies that make meters are quickly losing the ability to make consistent, accurate Vu meters with appropriate ballistics. This is causing us big problems!

We do have enough appropriate meters for an upcoming manufacturing run, and what seems to be a reliable source for meters at a very high price. I hope analog Vu meters with proper ballistics will not become extinct, soon.

[PookyNMR]

RDL (Radio Design Labs) make one as well.

[djchris73]

I'm also looking for a VU meter. It's gotta be 19" and rack mountable. Preferably 1 rack space but 2 rack spaces would be ok. And they got to be analog VU meters, not LEDs. I love to see needles flying and everything.
I saw the Logitek 2VUB, which is perfect, except for the price tag. I saw Brian Roth's post in gearslutz.com that "true" VU meters are $75 a pop. I can afford a pair. If a cheaper alternative to a $600 Logitek 2VUB is not feasible, does anybody know where I can get "DIY" instructions so I can make my own? something that can read line level signals coming from a mixing consoles master outputs.
I know a sheet metal company that makes custom face plates and boxes that is located close by.
I was checking out the Sifam meters and saw a few models that would be ok to use to make my own rack mountable display. I'm an electronics technician not an electrical engineer or else I would of designed my own by now. But I can read schematics, I own a soldering iron, I know Ohms law and I have a multimeter; so I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty.
Any help would greatly appreciated. Thanks. I don't know how old this post is, so I apologize for resurrecting it.

[drknob]

When we built the console at O'Henry, I settled on Sifam as the supplier of choice. Part of the reason was fit - we had particular real estate restrictions, but I will say that the performance was excellent. In 1999, we paid almost US$90 each for R22A meters with LED illumination. (we bought 92 of them!!) The larger R32A's (for the center section) were US$120 each. That was just for the meters. Metal work, circuit design and headaches were on top of that. A good meter buffer/driver is going to add some cost/work. The Logitech package is good, but for my money, the Durroughs stuff is excellent. You want good analog metering, it's gonna cost.

[Geoff Doane]

I've used several different versions of the McCurdy (and WBS) extended range VU meters over the years.  This seems to be the latest version:

http://www.mcradio.com/ats-100.htm

It may be more than you need, and it won't be cheap (probably in the $1K range), but you can simply plug a signal into it and be in business, if that's what you need.

For the more DIY type of application, maybe this is more your style:

http://www.mcradio.com/vup-4.htm

It doesn't have all the fancy I/O and variable gain, and it may also require an external power supply (the ones we have, run on

[Jason Lord]

http://www.dorrough.com/dorrough/

i'll through another vote in this direction.  

[Podgorny]

We've got the aforementioned Logitek 2VUB.
I know they're a bit more expensive than some other options, but they do exactly what they're supposed to do.  I'd recommend them.

[Ben F]

http://www.jlmaudio.com/VU%20Buffer.htm

[MagnetoSound]

Why do you want to use VU meters??

Get analogue PPMs if you can afford them. They come up on eBay regularly, in 19" rack format, too.

You'll be glad you did!

The best ones were made by Ernest Turner. the Sifam ones are good, too.

[davebl]

I have stereo MS/AB PPM's and would chose nothing else but the broadcasters in the USA insist on monitoring on VU's and LM100 devices.......

Dave
UK

[Peter Beckmann]

PPM, VU both useful, but in different ways.

I've got a set of the Crookwood VUs in a 19" rackmount format. Love them. I use them in my mastering console and very usefully they also have a stepped input attentuator for those hot CDs...

Call Crispin at Crookwood +44 (0)1672 811 649


PB