VU Help

Hi, I trying to trouble shoot a LA2A I built and have traced it back to the VU meter or maybe my utter lack of understanding of VU meters.

To troubleshoot I connected the VU directly to the output of another preamp with a VU meter that I have. (Pin 2 >> + side of the VU meter, Pin 3 >> - side of the VU)

While my preamp's VU will float up and float down like a normal VU, the one on my LA2A vibrates fast around 0 % with small signals and will shoot up and shoot back down with larger ones. Best I could explain it.

The meter is a API 7045. For some reason it has its % scale on top and the db scale on the bottom. When I got it I thought it would work just the same.

Thoughts?

Hi,

your meter apparently doesn't have
rectifier circuitry, which is what you need in order for it to work as a VU meter.

http://sound.westhost.com/project55.htm

Regards,
Milan

Ouch, so from a newby point of view I got some work ahead of me.

I saw this article when I was searching for answers, the simple circuit is something I could handle given a recipe of what components I need. The more complex circuit seems a bit over kill for what I need.

Any easy way to approach this?

http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=1297&highlight=vu+meter

Moamps - Much appreciated. I think I have found enough for me to figure this out.

Rectifier circuit built and it works just as expected.

Lesson learned

Thanks for the guidance :grin: