VUMeter Plugin

[BoringName]

Why not just change the names for the two states:
On = (was) Linear = (new) Logarithmic
Off = (was) blank = (new) Curve Smoothing

Because it's doing more than smoothing the curve, it turns the meter into an inaccurate mess really. The needle goes well past zero when it shouldn't and sits low when it should be in the middle of the meter. It won't match the music at all because it's based on a badly designed skin.

I might look at a better solution that actually smooths out the curve without messing up the extremes, like what hiccup suggested.

[hiccup]

I might look at a better solution that actually smooths out the curve without messing up the extremes, like what hiccup suggested.

For what it's worth:
I'm now using Excel to create the curves for my foobar2000 skins.

The formula I use there for getting the points for a traditional 'voltage' to dB curve' is by using "10 to the power over 20" in the formulas.
Where the '20' is the standard for dB curves as you will know.
But I can easily change the curve to become more and more linear by simply increasing the 20.

I don't think this will be directly applicable to the challenge you are facing with this, but I thought to mention it anyway.

But I'm still on the position that I think that first an actual problem should be found and defined, before making any effort to come up with a solution.
And after dozens of posts, I still do not understand what the problem is that would require a solution here.

[Bee-liever]

I might look at a better solution that actually smooths out the curve without messing up the extremes, like what hiccup suggested.

OK then. You and hiccup seem to have everything under control
Us end users in peanut-gallery will just keep mum for now 

[hiccup]

I might look at a better solution that actually smooths out the curve without messing up the extremes, like what hiccup suggested.

OK then. You and hiccup seem to have everything under control
Us end users in peanut-gallery will just keep mum for now  

Hi Bee-liever.
Before you go mum, I'm curious about your opinion on the matter.
I suppose you had a reason for participating in this? Have you come across VU meter skins that don't perform well and would benefit from some Red Bull?
(that can't be solved by simply turning the mouse-wheel to increase the gain)

[BoringName]

But I can easily change the curve to become more and more linear by simply increasing the 20.

I don't think this will be directly applicable to the challenge you are facing with this, but I thought to mention it anyway.

I was just playing around with this very thing in a spreadsheet. I was considering removing the linear option and adding a slider into the needle action menu to adjust the curve. Probably just 10 points in either direction although that might be overkill.....

But I'm still on the position that I think that first an actual problem should be found and defined, before making any effort to come up with a solution.
And after dozens of posts, I still do not understand what the problem is that would require a solution here.

I think it's just for people that want the needle to move more. I have a few songs where the needle just sits in a very small range and hardly moves. Of course it's doing what it's supposed to do but if the user just wants something flashy and has zero interest in accuracy, adjusting the curve will make the needle move more without it overshooting zero.

edit: Actually looking at the graph I'm not sure how much extra movement it would give. It should give a slightly wider range of motion but mobility settings might counter that a bit, I need to test it out.

[hiccup]

I was just playing around with this very thing in a spreadsheet. I was considering removing the linear option and adding a slider into the needle action menu to adjust the curve. Probably just 10 points in either direction although that might be overkill.....

Well, here is the difference I get between 20 and 50.
(I think the option to lower the value won't be useful for many skins?)

So that's an increase of 30, which doesn't seem completely over the top.



(ignore the strange things going on below -50, that's necessary for getting nice needle movement in that lowest region)

PS
I also have a suggestion for the name for such a function: CurveBoost™
(but it could be you'll get sued by some underdaks company ;-)

[sveakul]

But instead of having an opinion based on facts, you seem to prefer it being based on guesses, assumptions and emotions.
You have also said before something like 'fine, remove that option'. And now you want to keep it again. What's next?

I came out of "mum" (pardon the pun) because when I continue to be personally attacked it goes beyond some setting in a meter.  My opinions about anything are my own matter, I don't have to justify them up to anybody's book of standards.  The few GIF's I posted at the beginning didn't impress anybody so I gave up on that, I don't have time.  As far as your last sentence, if it isn't OBVIOUS that I said that in exasperation and resignation about the whole course of the discussion  I don't what to say except "people do say things like that."  It was only when BoringName "re-entered" with the surprise (to me) statement that it was checking that OPTION that provided the most accuracy that I continued any further.  Since he said he intends to hard-code that now as "selected" all my concerns may vanish.

I would be dishonest though if I didn't say that IMO the BEST route would be to keep the OPTION for you to decide to not use it, but that's BoringName's decision.  Just be aware that I'm not "gloating" over it.  You seem to have his ear for further modfiying HOW he hard-codes it, so you still have the ability to get what you want, and that's fine.

I presented those AIMP posts with the formulas to him merely because I had never seen that type of material posted before, not because I thought anything needed "fixed," man oh man sometimes conversation is just casual  eh!  Hell, it was all Greek to me, I thought maybe not to him!

[hiccup]

Since he said he intends to hard-code that now as "selected" all my concerns may vanish.

I now understand that (as BoringName also suspected) you had it backwards from the beginning.

Both BoringName and I have always been talking about the problems and uselessness of what that option does when it is unchecked.
It is checked by default, so the option is/was for a user to uncheck it.
And I find it useless when unchecked, and in BoringName's own words it can even 'create a mess'.

So I wasted all this time and effort of mine in having these discussions with you as a result of you misunderstanding what it was actually about.

What a waste.

You seem to have his ear for further modfiying HOW he hard-codes it, so you still have the ability to get what you want, and that's fine.

And you still don't get it.
We are now talking about having an option that will do what BoringName originally intended with 'unchecking linear'.

because when I continue to be personally attacked…

I believe you have that backwards too.
But please let's stop this nonsense and stop polluting this topic.
 

[BoringName]

New version - VUMeter2.1.zip

Changes
- Sample settings sub menu changed to "Needle Action". Positive and Negative renamed to "Rise" and "Fall". The scale has been changed from -8 to +8 with zero being the equivalent of 0.045. Each tick represents a 0.005 change so it spans 0.005 to 0.085 in the AIMP scale. The numbers might seem a bit weird, I started with .04 as zero but then realised it would make -8 actually zero which stops the meter entirely so I shifted it all by 0.005. It was either that or change the scale to -7 to +7 and for whatever reason, I'd rather have even numbers on it.... yeah it makes no sense.
- New slider option "Curve Adjustment" added to the Needle Action sub menu. This option flattens out the logarithmic curve of the peak values which widens the needles range of motion. In terms of the formula, the slider value is doubled and added to the base 20 figure. So setting the slider to 5 results in the formula being 30 * log instead of 20. I initially set a higher max but after testing, a max of 10 seems more than enough. A setting of 5 seems to give a decent range of motion for skins starting at a lower range like -60db.
- Linear option removed. (replaced by the Curve Adjustment which is much better). Leave the Curve Adjustment at zero if you want the meter to run like it previously did with "Linear" checked.
- Re-arranged the settings order so all the sub menus are at the top.
- Changed the logic for checking valid peak values.
- Fixed a bug where playing a mono track after a stereo track may cause the meter to not go below the peak of the previous stereo track.

I expect that bug was the cause of the intermittent needle lockups.

I looked into changing the slider bar appearance to add a larger notch for the zero location but changing the slider is looking like a bit of rabbit hole I don't have the motivation to go down this week.

edit: On the off chance the meter just displays a blank panel after upgrading. Close musicbee and edit the mbVUMeter.Settings.XML file which should be located in AppData\Roaming\MusicBee\Plugins\VUMeter or just the Plugins\VUMeter folder.

Either delete the MobilityPositive and MobilityNegative lines entirely or set them both to 0.04, save it and start Musicbee.

[hiccup]

New version - VUMeter2.1.zip

Wow again!

You have been making giant steps in getting pretty much all boxes checked in now being close to perfection.
In my opinion it now surpasses both the old and the new foobar2000 plugins.
Both in end-result, functionality, and in user-friendliness.

Hats off to you!

I'll do some more focused testing probably tomorrow, but it looks like the needle-hangs indeed have been solved.
I indeed had some mono test tracks, but I'm pretty sure it happened frequently on stereo material too.
(sometimes switching between tracks and test-tones like a junky on speed)

One thing I am not sure of is if the CurveBooster™ function is working as intended.
A very brief test (on only a single track and only one VU meter skin) gives me the impression that it may be doing the opposite of what I was expecting it to do.
But that's just a premature impression, will try it out better soon. (probably tomorrow)
Have you been testing this on a specific skin that behaved dull without any boost?
If so, perhaps you could share it so that we are on the same page here?

Cheers, and thanks^20  ;-)

[phred]

New version - VUMeter2.1.zip

edit: On the off chance the meter just displays a blank panel after upgrading. Close musicbee and edit the mbVUMeter.Settings.XML file which should be located in AppData\Roaming\MusicBee\Plugins\VUMeter or just the Plugins\VUMeter folder.

Either delete the MobilityPositive and MobilityNegative lines entirely or set them both to 0.04, save it and start Musicbee.

I've been away for a spell and I see there's been lots of activity here. I just updated to 2.1 from 1.8.2 and upon launching I get an "Error loading skin" popup near the VUMeter element and the skins dropdown is showing "empty" for each one.
I opened VUMeterSettings.xml and do not see either of the "Mobility" lines you should be deleted. My skins are where they've always been (\MusicBee\Plugins\VUMeter\VUSkins) but they do not show in the plugin's dropdown.





Here's the settings file in case it's helpful

Code

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SavedSettingsType xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <keepRatio>true</keepRatio>
  <framerateMax>60</framerateMax>
  <lastSkin>SPL Mk2 Phred on the Lookout</lastSkin>
  <linear>false</linear>
  <dbOffset>2</dbOffset>
  <hideHeader>true</hideHeader>
  <singleMeter>false</singleMeter>
  <sampleInterval>15</sampleInterval>
  <buffer>1</buffer>
  <suppressMsg>false</suppressMsg>
  <peakLED>true</peakLED>
  <removeGain>false</removeGain>
  <customColours />
  <bgColour>0</bgColour>
</SavedSettingsType>

[hiccup]

I just updated to 2.1 from 1.8.2 and upon launching I get an "Error loading skin" popup near the VUMeter element and the skins dropdown is showing "empty" for each one.

Welcome back from the civilized world phred!

Not sure if this helps, but what I usually do when installing a new version of the plugin is first use the 'uninstall plugin' feature' in MusicBee to remove the previous version.
Then I close MusicBee, navigate to the plugins folder and manually delete any files or dll's that were put there previously by the plugin.
Then start MusicBee again, and install the new version by using 'add plugin', and direct it to the downloaded .zip file.
And after that I always restart MB. Shouldn't be necessary perhaps, but just to be safe.

But I also seem to remember you previously also had issues with the plugin that I could not think of an explanation for.
So maybe there are other things going on?

What version of MusicBee are you using? Include the letter at the end!
;-)

[phred]

Welcome back from the civilized world phred!

Hmmm ... thanks, I think. We'll see how civilized it is come this Tuesday here in the US.

Not sure if this helps, but what I usually do when installing a new version of the plugin is first use the 'uninstall plugin' feature' in MusicBee to remove the previous version.

Before I followed your suggestion, I did what I should've done first - reboot the PC. And that took care of the issue.

What version of MusicBee are you using? Include the letter at the end!
;-)

I just love it when my own words come back to haunt me.

[hiccup]

Before I followed your suggestion, I did what I should've done first - reboot the PC. And that took care of the issue.

Ok, great I guess.
But that still makes me think there is something else going on on your system.
Simply restarting MusicBee after removing the old plugin and installing the new version should suffice in my opinion.
Looks like perhaps some other tool or program is keeping something hostage until you restart Windows completely.

[phred]

Looks like perhaps some other tool or program is keeping something hostage until you restart Windows completely.

Possible, but I think unlikely as my PC reboots automatically once every 24 hours. So any hostage taking is (or should be) removed at two in the morning.

I'll add a couple of new VU skins and see if they show up as expected.