Consumer Electronics

PEAK READING METERS

The first significant departure from the erroneously-dubbed VU meters found on home type tape decks, occurred when the rather critical parameters of slow-speed cassette tape decks and tape made it essential to supply a faster responding meter to home recordists who would otherwise run the gain or recording level up too high. While reel-to-reel tape decks, operating at higher tape speeds and utilising wider tape, generally have a fair amount of headroom or “margin for over-recording”, the same is not true when it comes to slow-speed cassette taping where even a slight amount of over-recording causes high levels of distortion during playback of the tape. Mechanical peak-reading record-level meters, though faster responding than ...