The wide and really rigid chest (we call "side-cabinet") is a Japanese antique (about 100 years old?), I believe. I purchased this at an antique furniture shop in Kobe around 1980.
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VU Meters: Let's See 'Em!!
- Thread starter dallasjustice
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The wide and really rigid chest (we call "side-cabinet") is a Japanese antique (about 100 years old?), I believe. I purchased this at an antique furniture shop in Kobe around 1980.
Yes, I agree with your color chart! The lowest huge pipe sound is about 36 - 37 Hz with subtle 32 Hz standing wave or air resonance sound. Thank you for this precise chart.
I edited and corrected in my post #420 above.
bothu
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This is an old amplifier that I build 2003 to my sisters boy.
I found the meters sitting on an old vacuum gauge in a scrap box at my work, I saved them and made a new scale to the amplifier.
A wild guess is they were manufactured in Germany in about 1980 at the vacuum company BALTZER.
I like the rounded shape.
The amp :
The original scale with new values:
The meter :
/ Bo Thunér from Linköping Sweden.
I found the meters sitting on an old vacuum gauge in a scrap box at my work, I saved them and made a new scale to the amplifier.
A wild guess is they were manufactured in Germany in about 1980 at the vacuum company BALTZER.
I like the rounded shape.
The amp :
The original scale with new values:
The meter :
/ Bo Thunér from Linköping Sweden.
Andysu
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if you already have spectrum lab ( set it to, "too many colours" ) it gives best clearer results as many use the same your using and i can't make heads or tails of it ? the colour is morbid . too many colours is better .
the paler blue is nothing . the brighter blue faint signal the yellow , orange , red and pink shows high peak ranges and white is mega lfe peak and often rare it displays .
DL4YHF's Audio Spectrum Analyser
Spectrum Laboratory for Soundcard with Waterfall and FFT.
www.qsl.net
Alien 3 out of most movies i checked for higher highs Alien 3 reaches 18KHz with a fundamental sine wave sci-fi sound/fx during the cat scan scene . not many home theaters can hear this sound as there home theatre isn't correctly tuned and all they can hear is muffled low frequency and no highs , even though 18KHz is rather hard to hear and most home theaters may distort or blow the tweeters . i'm running cinema JBL professional which is what the sound was made for .
the tone sounds feels like a pressure on the eardrum ( only for few seconds ) and may be around 90dBA or less depends on the distance away from proper "common" matched LCR , i use five screen so not so common . the JBL horns can play up to 120dBA thou i care not to have it that level as its unsafe and 85dBA peak is what i keep it .
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itz_all_about_the_music
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The "Magic Eye" vacuum tube. Think I'm kidding? I had a vacuum tube mono 7" reel-to-reel that incorporated this VU Meter. See: http://boginjr.com/electronics/lv/magic-eye/
Let me know if you're "young" enough to appreciate this '60's tech.
Let me know if you're "young" enough to appreciate this '60's tech.
Attachments
Only video will do i'm afraid.The "Magic Eye" vacuum tube. Think I'm kidding? I had a vacuum tube mono 7" reel-to-reel that incorporated this VU Meter. See: http://boginjr.com/electronics/lv/magic-eye/
Let me know if you're "young" enough to appreciate this '60's tech.
Recall the whole Douk thing I posted a while back? How the stock PCB used some sort of uC or something to try and emulate VU meter ballistics? And how it didn't follow the audio - like when panning - (thread is here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...rs-in-the-audio-chain.7126/page-4#post-598096 )
Well, I finally got it to actually act like a VU meter. Had to spin my own PCB. Dumbasses. I tried one of those "... TA7318P VU Meter Driver PCB Board Stereo module..." boards you get off of ebay and Amazon and they aren't a VU meter driver... they're some sort of a PPM thing (tho they ain't real good at that) ... You'd play something, the meters would go all spastic.
Then when you went to run a cal tone, wouldn't even show any deflection. Obviously not VU.
So the meters that it came with are the typical cheapass 500uA meters with no-so-good ballistics. But I got them to sort of work.
See vid .. and yea it's the crappy phone camera audio - link to the actual tune below
Note that when the vid starts out there's a cal tone running. I then switch to the tune and it actually kinda-sorta looks like a real VU meter. Sort of.
Pics here. And yea - I flipped the front bezel around since it ain't no funky bear, Douk thing anymore... And I mangled up some screw terminals I had laying around. The pot in the back still works but that's about the only thing left of the POS circuity it came with.
Thanks to Objective Sounds for the info on driving crap, cheap ass VU meters.
- - - music is stuff I played on, engineered and produced - Jon Fritz - - Called "Wishing Well"
Well, I finally got it to actually act like a VU meter. Had to spin my own PCB. Dumbasses. I tried one of those "... TA7318P VU Meter Driver PCB Board Stereo module..." boards you get off of ebay and Amazon and they aren't a VU meter driver... they're some sort of a PPM thing (tho they ain't real good at that) ... You'd play something, the meters would go all spastic.
Then when you went to run a cal tone, wouldn't even show any deflection. Obviously not VU.
So the meters that it came with are the typical cheapass 500uA meters with no-so-good ballistics. But I got them to sort of work.
See vid .. and yea it's the crappy phone camera audio - link to the actual tune below
Note that when the vid starts out there's a cal tone running. I then switch to the tune and it actually kinda-sorta looks like a real VU meter. Sort of.
Pics here. And yea - I flipped the front bezel around since it ain't no funky bear, Douk thing anymore... And I mangled up some screw terminals I had laying around. The pot in the back still works but that's about the only thing left of the POS circuity it came with.
Thanks to Objective Sounds for the info on driving crap, cheap ass VU meters.
- - - music is stuff I played on, engineered and produced - Jon Fritz - - Called "Wishing Well"
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Valiant effort to get them to work the way they do. They sure are cute VU meters even if they don't operate properly.
We should be careful about "genuine/authentic" VU meter standard/specification;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VU_meter
Especially transient behaviors of rise time, overshoot and fall time :
The rise time, defined as the time it takes for the needle to reach 99% of the distance to 0 VU when the VU-meter is submitted to a signal that steps from 0 to a level that reads 0 VU, is 300 ms. The overshoot must be within 1 to 1.5%. The fall time is the same as the rise time, 300 ms.
The Nishizawa R-65 VU meter and the amp board ATV205EXT which I use for the 12-VU-Meter Array shared in my posts here and here is essentially compatible with the above specifications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VU_meter
Especially transient behaviors of rise time, overshoot and fall time :
The rise time, defined as the time it takes for the needle to reach 99% of the distance to 0 VU when the VU-meter is submitted to a signal that steps from 0 to a level that reads 0 VU, is 300 ms. The overshoot must be within 1 to 1.5%. The fall time is the same as the rise time, 300 ms.
The Nishizawa R-65 VU meter and the amp board ATV205EXT which I use for the 12-VU-Meter Array shared in my posts here and here is essentially compatible with the above specifications.
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Be great to use those - I can't seem to find them anywhere... also - what is the drive requirement for the coils?
Ralph_Cramden
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Hi ＠ajawamnet,
I received similar PM inquiry from several of my ASR Forum friends.
I will soon get one full copy of the out-of-print old catalog book of Nishizawa Electric Meters Manufacturing Co., Ltd. containing the details of R-series meters including VU meter R-65. I will get back to you as soon as I would get it.
knobtwiddler
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Fantastic work, Dualazmak!
Do you know if Nishizawa are still making the meters, or have Suzudes bought a large stock of old components? Is there more than one model of VU meter?
As you say, the IEC VU spec requires a special ballistic that 99/100 meters on the market do not meet. In the case of Hoyt meters ($$$), they use a 'pivot and jewel' movement. Their ammeters do NOT use this special movement. If anyone thinks an ammeter will work, think again!
Do you know if Nishizawa are still making the meters, or have Suzudes bought a large stock of old components? Is there more than one model of VU meter?
As you say, the IEC VU spec requires a special ballistic that 99/100 meters on the market do not meet. In the case of Hoyt meters ($$$), they use a 'pivot and jewel' movement. Their ammeters do NOT use this special movement. If anyone thinks an ammeter will work, think again!
I wrote in my post on my project thread;
As I shared here and here, it was my great pleasure finding the availability of NISHIZAWA VU Meter R-65 kit in Japan. The professional-use large glass-face VU meter R-65 (W111 mm x H77 mm: glass-face W100 mm x H40 mm) has already disappeared from the product list of Nishizawa Electric Meters Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (NEMM Co., Ltd.). Very fortunately, however, a small company SUZUDES10 issued a special contract with MEMM Co., Ltd. for small scale production and supply of their VU meter R-65, and SUZUDES10 replaces the bulb backlights with color LEDs. SUZUDES10 is also selling the R-65 VU meter unit of original bulb light as well as four different color LED ones;
http://suzudes10.shop-pro.jp/?mode=cate&cbid=2774641&csid=0
For the LED color variations, SUZUDES10 also contracted with NEMM Co., Ltd. to have white scale plate in R-65, instead of the original pale yellow one, for better LED color representations.
https://ameblo.jp/suzudes20/entry-12716821866.html
I am very happy finding such a small niche VU meter manufacturer is still alive and active in Japan, even though I do not know whether they would accept purchase order from abroad or not.
I heard from SUZUDES10 that they bought several hundreds of R-65 VU meter from NEMM Co., Ltd. last year under the special contract, and that was the final production by a semi-retired engineer at NEMM; the current stock of R-65 meters at SUZUDES10, therefore, is the "only" new (not used) ones worldwide, I believe. Consequently, NEMM has completely stopped production of physical VU meters even though the company is still active in production of various electric meters for industrial use.
It looks, quite regretfully for many of you ASR friends, that SUZUDES10 does not accept purchase order from abroad.
As shared here and here, on the other hand, Yamaki Electric Co, Ltd. is still active in (expensive) VU meter production for professional use; I do not know status of their business outside of Japan by themselves or through dealers.
https://www.yamaki-ec.co.jp/product_cat/vu-meter/
https://www.yamaki-ec.co.jp/product_cat/vu-monitor/
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knobtwiddler
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Thank you very much!
At the sort of prices Yamaki are listed at, I could buy Hoyt. I am not sure which meter is better, though. Now that Sifam no longer manufacture at the same UK factory, there are very, very few good manufacturers for audio meters. I shall try and contact Yamaki and see if the price is improved if you buy many.
At the sort of prices Yamaki are listed at, I could buy Hoyt. I am not sure which meter is better, though. Now that Sifam no longer manufacture at the same UK factory, there are very, very few good manufacturers for audio meters. I shall try and contact Yamaki and see if the price is improved if you buy many.
I agree with you it would be very difficult now ( and in future) to find large "glass-face" genuine (IEC compatible) VU meters (like Nishizawa R-65 I could fortunately get 12 of it) for DIY building of multiple VU-meter array in "reasonable" price for our home audio DIY.
Just for your info, It looks HAYAKUMO still accepts purchase order from abroad for their expensive professional FRESNO VU meter;
https://en.hayakumo.tokyo/foreno
which uses VU meter produced by Fuso Electric Co., Ltd.
The size of the meter, however, is much smaller than Nishizawa's R-65.
Just for your info, It looks HAYAKUMO still accepts purchase order from abroad for their expensive professional FRESNO VU meter;
https://en.hayakumo.tokyo/foreno
which uses VU meter produced by Fuso Electric Co., Ltd.
The size of the meter, however, is much smaller than Nishizawa's R-65.
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knobtwiddler
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Thank you again!
There are broadcast meters that use the Yamaki movement. I have not seen inside the Foreno, but I wonder if its driver circuit is similar? I think they are basically digital meters, but driving an analogue movement. You can see one here: https://reverb.com/item/28187339-bi...er-sonny-u-d65-e001-equipped-4-yamaki-y-vu-80
It's the most sophisticated analogue meter driver circuit that I have seen. I am assuming that it gives multiple options, so loudness (which is where the DSP comes in - for broadcast), VU, peak etc. It is easy to do VU and you only need a handful more parts to do PPM, but loudness is more demanding.
NB - Nishizawa replied to my email! They were very polite. Sadly, they do not make any VU meters now.
There are broadcast meters that use the Yamaki movement. I have not seen inside the Foreno, but I wonder if its driver circuit is similar? I think they are basically digital meters, but driving an analogue movement. You can see one here: https://reverb.com/item/28187339-bi...er-sonny-u-d65-e001-equipped-4-yamaki-y-vu-80
It's the most sophisticated analogue meter driver circuit that I have seen. I am assuming that it gives multiple options, so loudness (which is where the DSP comes in - for broadcast), VU, peak etc. It is easy to do VU and you only need a handful more parts to do PPM, but loudness is more demanding.
NB - Nishizawa replied to my email! They were very polite. Sadly, they do not make any VU meters now.
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