Roon VU meters, in one form or another

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21

eBay has all kinds of cool VU meters. Some really nice homemade LED ones.

22

While iā€™m at it;
This is an old casette deck which has been cleaned out internally. Instead, a very nice eBay DIY headphone amp has been installed. (Lehmann Black Cube clone) Then i realized i had a cheap DAC, also from eBay, in a drawer.
Of course i wanted to make the original VU meters work so bought one of the VU meter drive kits from eBay and what you see here is the result!


Next step is trying to get a Roon Bridge in there somehow! (I have an old Bluesound Node on its way!)
Oh, and the rec-level knob is the volume control for playback.
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23

I know it might be too much to ask, but that is exactly what I want. Would you be able and willing to post instructions on how to make those?

Also, do they get their input from the speakers or from the preamp or a source?

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide.

24

Here is a place that sells great kits at ok prices too. They ship intā€™l

https://www.jlmaudio.com/shop/vu-meter-kits.html?display_tax_prices=0

The 0 on the end of the link is for no GST if you are not in Australia

My setup is not from them, I managed to get some throw away units from a studio I do work forā€¦I have about 4 pairs I think.

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25

Thatā€™s awesome!

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26

Thanks!!! Now I just have to figure out how to connect them to one of the outputs on my preamp via RCA, maybe also the unused output on my Monolithic power supply, and Iā€™ll build a nice wood enclosure for them. The same place sells a board to do that (I think), and there is a forum discussion there for how to build it. Iā€™m getting too old for learning curves like that. :persevere:

27

Not quite VU meters, but in the spirit of eye candyā€¦

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28

Did you make it or buy it? How where? How connected to audio signal? It looks fantastic!

29

A guy called Saulius in Lithuania makes them:

and this is his eBay shop:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/saulius659/m.html

I bought mine secondhand off eBay. It has two RCA inputs for the signal. I used a cable like this to piggyback off the DAC output:

https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg00465/stackable-2x-phono-pl-to-pl-0/dp/AV14063

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30

Beware of disturbing factor or influence the sound of your amplifier

31

I agree with this:

Splitting the line level signal from your DAC is likely to degrade sound quality. Iā€™ve had direct experience with it, plugging and unplugging the output of my DAC to 1 then 2 preamps.

The way to create a second audio output to use any sort of meter is to configure Roon to output a second audio signal to some otherwise unused system output, like the motherboard audio out; then combine zones into a group - your main listening zone plus the system output; you can sync them up with the delay feature.

I wouldnā€™t try to split an analog signal without a buffer of some sort, and even then there is a question of signal degradation.

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32

Actually what I am doing is this: Balanced XLR from RME ADI-2 DAC goes to poweramps (Hypex nCore) and main speakers (ATC SCM-11s). Unbalanced RCA from DAC goes to powered subwoofer (ATC C1) and piggyback cable to VU meter. The signal on the RCA output is full range.
So I donā€™t think the VU meter is affecting the main channel over the XLR.
In any case I hear no audible difference whatsoever.

Thatā€™s actually pretty clever, never thought of that. Though I use the system for more than Roon, for example playing movies with Plex, so it wouldnā€™t work for anything but Roon. But still a clever idea.

33

Thanks! On the signal from your DAC, that is the configuration with my DAC where I noticed an issue. My Wyred4Sound has both RCA and true balanced XLR outputs and I had each output going to a separate preamp. And one day I was fiddling on the back of one preamp while listening to the other and unplugged the XLR cables coming from the DAC. The signal noticeably strengthened. So I did some focused testing. It really seems both outputs were not intended to be used simultaneously for max quality.

34

Yes I think that is quite dependent on the particular model of DAC. I know some are not intended to be used XLR+RCA simultaneously, whereas others are. I researched quite carefully to ensure mine was, as I wanted to run my sub from the second outputs.

35

Hey roonies,

please create us a nice gadgetā€¦ I think it will be nice to have the option to use a VU- meter screen with nice analog or digital VU- Metersā€¦

Thanks!

Best reguards,

Nik

36

Consider reposting this as a Feature Request. Better audience there.

38

Iā€™d love something visual like this. You can superimpose 3rd party VU meter software over a Roon web display, but itā€™s hardly integrated.

39

Beautiful, love my AS2100.

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40

I stick with it, it would be a nice extra choice on this screen ā€¦

cover
cover.jpg789Ɨ426 35 KB

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41

without being totally superficial - yes yes yes - i would LOVE to see this on the roon CC display. Sometimes the cover art just gets a bitā€¦static
Obviously not as important as bug fixes and mobile and classical and all that stuff, but it would be so cool

1 Like