VUMeter Plugin

[phred]

Technically it's not a glitch. The needle has been rotated to an angle that places it outside the bounds of the background image and foreground image. This has to occur for some skins to work properly. The issue is the panel hasn't been resized vertically to the size of the skin so it's showing the out of bounds part of the needle. The easy solution is to just drag the top of the panel down until the black area is gone.

Yes, reducing the height of the window does make the referenced part of the needle not display.

[BoringName]

New Version - VUMeter1.3.zip

Changes
- New option to lock the aspect ratio to the Y axis.
- Fixed graphical issue with merged skins where a dividing line could be seen when it was set to a large size.

I had to alter a fair bit more code than I expected to implement the Y axis option, everything seems to be working ok so hopefully I haven't broken anything. Glad I did it as it does make configuring taller skins easier eg) Night Bars.

There is still a graphical glitch that seems to be more prevalent if you lock the Y axis, when you widen a skin to more than half the screen, some of the meter or even all of it may get covered in black (even with the use skin colour option ticked). Restarting musicbee or adjusting the height (even just a tiny bit) make it appear again. I don't have a solution for it, I think it may have something do with the crazy control hierarchy going on to get OpenGL into Musicbee.

It only seems to happen when resizing to quite large sizes so I don't think it's a huge issue.

I haven't done anything about the needle out of bounds issue yet.

Barring the need to fix any serious errors I will slow down with the updates for a while. Really this time....

[sveakul]

Thank you very much for the 1.3 version so soon!!

The addition of the lock aspect ratio to Y axis option has made the difference in single meter display mode being useable at all in smaller spaces.  For example, here is the h&m meter as a single but minus the Y-lock, compared to using the Y-lock, both in the same panel space:



The only disappointment is that with meters who use a linear format, while the new option will allow its use as "single meter", a slice of the right end of the meter is always cut off; this is not related to the issue making the panel width half the screen as the panel is the same size as the above two examples:
Edit: Just dawned on me, the plugin is just making a clean half/half slice of dual meters that are joined together by design in the first place, so this is no bug, nothing to adjust!!



Thanks again for the new option!  The Phred on the Lookout skin metered up:

[BoringName]

Edit: Just dawned on me, the plugin is just making a clean half/half slice of dual meters that are joined together by design in the first place, so this is no bug, nothing to adjust!!

Not going to lie, I gave out a sigh when I read your initial post, I was on the way out to dinner and fully planned to give a detailed explanation of how it all worked when I got home. Happy I don't have to now

I did mention the single meter option isn't suitable for "merged skins" in the 1.2 change notes. There is probably a better way to describe them but that's all I can come up with for now. Suggestions welcome.

This will probably come back to bite me later but the plugin is could be made 3D capable, so theoretically it could support meters that operate on the Z axis. ie) get closer and further away instead of just rotating left and right/up and down.

edit: I thought I better clarify "is" vs "could be made".

[hiccup]

I did mention the single meter option isn't suitable for "merged skins" in the 1.2 change notes. There is probably a better way to describe them but that's all I can come up with for now. Suggestions welcome.

Perhaps:
- mono image meter (a single image meter. when used for stereo, the left and right meter will look identical)
- stereo image meter (two separate images for the left and right channel)
- combined stereo image meter (two images that need to be displayed together to show the complete stereo meter)

---

The only disappointment is that with meters who use a linear format, while the new option will allow its use as "single meter", a slice of the right end of the meter is always cut off

Technically it is not cutting off anything. It is simply showing the left meter only.
And the left meter (from your screenshot) only has a border at the left, and the right meter only has a border on the right, (well, and top and bottom)

So the 'single meter' option will usually only work well with 'mono image meters'.

The Phred on the Lookout skin metered up:

You may like (the new) 'DejaVU Compact Phred on the Lookout' meter?

[sveakul]

You may like (the new) 'DejaVU Compact Phred on the Lookout' meter?

Yes, looks great on my Lyrics panel, thanks.

[hiccup]

Yes, looks great on my Lyrics panel, thanks.

Good to hear/see.

What's your opinion on dB accuracy for these kind of VU meters?
Would you prefer total accuracy (such as with AcuVU) or do you think bending the truth a little bit is OK?
(it makes it easier to chose values that look good, and having them aligned and filling the scale in a visually pleasant way)

[hiccup]

@BoringName
About the 'linear' option:
Is this (still) a useful additional setting to have?
I checked several AIMP meters, and not one shows any improvement when it's unchecked.
Contrary to that: they all work worse, the needle being glued to the minimum position a lot of the time)
If you agree, perhaps just get rid of it to keep things lean and mean?
(it seems to me that the scrollwheel function to in/decrease levels is more than adequate to make some adjustments when needed)

Also:
Am I wrong in thinking that MobilityNegative and MobilityPositive don't have any effect anymore?

[BoringName]

About the 'linear' option:
Is this (still) a useful additional setting to have?

Probably not. I wasted a lot of time on it thinking AIMP's implementation had problems when it had nothing to do with AIMP,  it was the skins themselves. /shakes fist.

I don't like it when people take options out of software but in this case I think it just confuses things and doesn't really help. And as you pointed out, the DB adjustment is available. So I will take it out of the next version.

Am I wrong in thinking that MobilityNegative and MobilityPositive don't have any effect anymore?

I haven't implemented those settings. I assume they are meant to adjust the needle movement speed but I don't think I can implement that with how the plugin works. At the moment any method I can think of would probably make the meter less accurate or out of sync.

I haven't done a lot of testing yet but it seems I have the LVU skins working so that will be in the next version.

The dbs field in the settings.ini file specifies how many pixels of the needle/LED image to draw based on the current decibel level |decibels; pixels|. Can you spot the odd one out?

Code

dbs=8;100|7;120|6;140|5;160|4;180|3;200|2;220|1;240|0;260|-1;280|-2;300|-3;320|-4;340|-5;360|-6;380|-7;400|-8;420|-9;440|-10;460|-11;480|-12;5000|-13;520|-14;540|-15;560|-16;580|-17;600|-18;620|-19;640|-20;660|-21;680|-22;700

The first vertical LVU skin I grabbed to test and it was setup wrong!

[phred]

@BoringName
About the 'linear' option:
Is this (still) a useful additional setting to have?

NO!!! Please do not remove it. Or not until I've done some more testing. A few days ago I found the needles showing a very low level. I enabled linear and they popped right up. Playing around with it a little bit right now, I found one skin that when linear is disabled the right meter doesn't move at all (DejaVU Compact Phred on the Outlook. I will shortly file a report for hiccup on his skins thread.) And some of his others the left meter doesn't move. I need some time to go through all the skins and take notes before I file a report. For the time being, I can report that all four original skins do not move  when linear is disabled.

I'll conduct a full test of all of them in a couple of hours and report back.

[hiccup]

@BoringName
About the 'linear' option:
Is this (still) a useful additional setting to have?

NO!!! Please do not remove it…
… I found one skin that when linear is disabled the right meter doesn't move at all (DejaVU Compact Phred on the Outlook.
… And some of his others the left meter doesn't move.

Those are weird bugs, and obviously not something that should be related to- or possibly fixed by using either linear or logarithmic curves.
Good luck testing. (make sure that you have a clean VUMeter 1.3 install without any leftovers from previous testing?)

If you do find specific VUMeter skins that indeed have some deadened needle action that is brought to live with linear disabled, share which one(s)?

[hiccup]

I haven't implemented those settings. I assume they are meant to adjust the needle movement speed but I don't think I can implement that with how the plugin works. At the moment any method I can think of would probably make the meter less accurate or out of sync.

You could probably describe it as some attack/decay setting for the needle action.
MobilityNegative is affecting needle movement in the downward direction, MobilityPositive is for the upward direction.
It affects the impulse/speed of the needle.

It would be nice to have. An example, on top AIMP, bottom MusicBee.
The AIMP needle is working much nicer (and more realistic) for this VU meter skin.
(but I can completely understand it if it's something that just cannot be ported to your plugin)



Such a setting would also be useful if you indeed succeed in getting peak lights to work.
Then you could have the needle acting more relaxed and less nervous, as an 'average loudness' indicator', and the lamps as fast peak indicators.

(PS: as you can see, VUMeter MB is still a bit 'behind the beat'...)
I asked ChatGPT about the IPS for my (budget) CPU, and it said: "132 billion instructions per second is a reasonable estimate"
So that shouldn't be the bottleneck here? ;-)

[phred]

I'll conduct a full test of all of them in a couple of hours and report back.

The test was done immediately following a Windows 10 reboot and with MB 3.6.9018 P.

I tested all 22 (currently) available skins and there's some weird stuff going on.

Overall, with all skins, there is more "movement" of the needles/bars with linear on. I don't know how else to describe it.

Two of the original skins (packaged with the plugin) have issues. M4762 and Hartmann & Braun. With linear enabled, all is well. With linear disabled, there is no needle movement.

Four of hiccup's skins displayed issues:
In the DejaVU Compact series, Elemental, MusicBee3, and Phred on the Lookout are fine with linear enabled. When disabled, there is no movement of the right needle.

In DejaVU Compact, with linear disabled the left needle does not move. Linear enabled is fine.

Let me know if more information is needed in order to fix this. Or, I can just leave liner enabled. As long as it isn't removed.

Example...

[hiccup]

I tested all 22 (currently) available skins and there's some weird stuff going on.

Only 22?
https://www.aimp.ru/forum/index.php?topic=52865.0

Two of the original skins (packaged with the plugin) have issues…
Four of hiccup's skins displayed issues…

That's really weird.
Both BoringName and I have been doing some serious testing/developing this stuff for the last couple of weeks, and it looks like neither of us has experienced this kind of bugs. (yet?)

I'm sure you are not on drugs or imagining things, so I am wondering if there might be something specific going on on your system that might be interfering, and causing these issues?
Antivirus software, audio drivers, 3rd party audio software, some particular customised audio settings?
Anything?

And just to be very sure:
You are using a squeaky clean portable MusicBee and VUMeter install for testing this?

[phred]

I'm sure you are not on drugs or imagining things, so I am wondering if there might be something specific going on on your system that might be interfering, and causing these issues?

This issue may -cause- me to seek out some medication.

Antivirus software, audio drivers, 3rd party audio software, some particular customised audio settings?
Anything?

AV is not a problem as they were working a couple of days ago. Drivers haven't changed, and there's no 3rd party audio software.

And just to be very sure:
You are using a squeaky clean portable MusicBee and VUMeter install for testing this?

No, not a -new- portable install, but I will do that after I boot into safe mode and test again. But that won't be for a while.