ABSTRACT
Mechanical meters involve a magnet and a coil that move a needle. They take up quite a lot of space, and usually only involve a scale of around 24 dB. Bar meters involve either a column of LEDs, a plasma screen or a control on a computer screen. Bar meters might provide some extra indicators in addition to the standard level gauge:
l Peak hold – a held line on the meter indicating the highest meter reading. Usually the hold duration can be set to forever, a few seconds or off. This feature tells us how far below 0 dB the highest peak of the signal hits, which can be useful during recording or bouncing, where we use this information to push the signal further up.
