VU meter

English

Etymology

Abbreviation of volume unit + meter.

Noun

VU meter (plural VU meters)

1. A display in audio equipment that represents the loudness of the signal.
   • 1978, Craig Anderton, Home recording for musicians:

     VU (volume unit) meters are wonderful to look at as their pointers swing merrily back and forth across their brightly-lit faces.

   • 2006, David E Reese, Lynne S Gross, Brian Gross, Radio production worktext: studio and equipment:

     The accuracy of VU meters is sometimes questioned in two areas.

2. (computing, chiefly demoscene) Any animated graphical representation of the volume of sound or music (often subdivided across channels).
   • 1991, Kenrick J. Mock, “demos on tybalt?”, in comp.sys.apple2 (Usenet):

     The ECC Syncro Demo is a demonstration of text scrolling in the GS border area, as well as having VU meters in the border area. Similar to FTA's X-mas demo.

   • 1991, Cybernetworx, “VU meters”, in comp.sys.amiga.programmer (Usenet):

     Hi, I was wondering if anyone had any source code that showed how to read the values to construct a VU meter from a tracker replay routine.