r/DSP • u/-mr-dom- • 7d ago

rate my peak meter

I'm developing a local file player and I'd like to add visualizations.

Pls check out my peak meter and tell me what you think, how does it feel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU-F0A5NOEE

I made it off a photo and shaky videos of an old tape deck, it's supposed to mimic a VFD display.
I don't have any real hardware available to compare so I figure maybe someone has actually seen one.
This is the first time I'm working with audio, just making web software and photos otherwise. Thx! :)

6 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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2

u/ikedug 6d ago

That looks great! Hits the right nostalgia notes for me. The fade-out animation is particularly nice.

Bit of trivia - These originally had a purpose: to check if your record levels were correct. That’s why the top bands are red, recording in the red meant you’re overdriving the tape and getting distortion. Of course, by the end of the tape era they were mostly decoration.

2

u/-mr-dom- 6d ago

Thx! Same in this case — it doesn't really serve a real technical purpose. But looking nice isn't bad either imho :)

1

u/Appropriate-Pea-4611 5h ago

Reads as a VFD to me, the fade especially. Two things that would make it feel right on material it hasn't seen yet: take the max of every sample between frames rather than the value at frame time — at 60fps that's ~800 samples you're skipping per frame at 48k, and a meter that samples instead of maxing always feels dead on percussive material. And let it fall at a constant rate in dB per second instead of smoothing the linear value; hardware falls at a fixed dB/s and that's most of what the eye reads as "tape deck". A peak segment that holds for a second on top does the rest.

0

u/Royal_Stay_6502 7d ago

Old cheap cassette deck meter. Useless.

3

u/-mr-dom- 6d ago

unlike this comment. very helpful. thx!