{"id":130282,"date":"2021-11-09T09:24:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T17:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/visualizing-audio-with-an-lcd-vu-meter"},"modified":"2021-11-09T09:24:19","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T17:24:19","slug":"visualizing-audio-with-an-lcd-vu-meter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/visualizing-audio-with-an-lcd-vu-meter","title":{"rendered":"Visualizing Audio With An LCD VU Meter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cTdNuC8ql4o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We all love seeing data represented in pretty ways \u2014 whether it\u2019s necessary or not. Take VU meters for example. They\u2019re a super useful tool for audio editors to balance signals, but they also look <em>really<\/em> cool, even if you\u2019re only listening to music. Who didn\u2019t use a Winamp skin with a built-in VU meter back in the day? Even after the demise of everyone\u2019s favorite media player, we still see these great graphs popping up all over the place.<\/p>\n<p>Most recently, we\u2019ve seen VU meters circle back around to have a bit of a retro vibe in <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.io\/project\/182518-diy-big-arduino-vu-meter-on-40x2-lcd-dispaly\" target=\"_blank\">this awesome Arduino-controlled LCD VU meter built by [mircemk]<\/a>. Based on the <a href=\"https:\/\/create.arduino.cc\/projecthub\/ThomAce\/ktaudio-vu-meter-1402b1\" target=\"_blank\">KTAudio VU Meter project<\/a>, it features an ultra-wide LCD, audio input, and volume knob, all tidily wrapped up in a case whose color scheme that can only conjure images of the famed <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Altair_8800\" target=\"_blank\">Altair 8800<\/a>, or an old Tektronix oscilloscope. The LCD itself is fairly responsive \u2014 but you can judge for yourself in the video below. The signature fading that so commonly accompanies screen refreshes on LCDs such as this one really adds to the retro effect.<\/p>\n<p>You may just need one of these displays on your desk \u2014 after all, while you may not need to know how loud each audio channel is, don\u2019t you at least want the information available? <em>Just in case. <\/em>Bar graph display a bit too modern-looking for you? Well then you should check out <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2021\/07\/14\/analog-style-vu-meter-with-arduino-and-oled-display\/\">[mircemk]\u2019s OLED version that displays dual analog meters.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We all love seeing data represented in pretty ways \u2014 whether it\u2019s necessary or not. Take VU meters for example. They\u2019re a super useful tool for audio editors to balance signals, but they also look really cool, even if you\u2019re only listening to music. Who didn\u2019t use a Winamp skin with a built-in VU meter [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1694,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-media-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}