Vintage vibe: 10 amplifiers with VU meters

VU. Vexatious undertaking? Not necessarily. Variable umph? Getting closer. Volume unit? Now we’re cookin’: a 1939 collaboration between Bell Labs, NBC and CBS that standardised loudness measurement. Corresponding VU meters would display the new ‘volume unit’ level but, because of the needle’s mass and non-zero rise time, the real-time measurement would be averaged over 300ms — this narrow time window would give listeners a more accurate display of perceived loudness.

During the 1970s and 1980s, no self-respecting hi-fi manufacturer would omit VU meters from an amplifier or tape deck. No self-respecting audiophile would buy an amplifier without them. But just as the CD saw the digital domain encroach upon the hi-fi world, digital audio equipment’s db Full Scale (dbFS) metering began to invade the VU meter’s territory. A dbFS meter could show transient spikes that a VU meter might miss. It also sidestepped the disparity between pro and consumer gear’s 0 VU point: +4dBu for studio heads, -10dBu for home listeners.

By the mid-90s, VU meters began to disappear from home audio gear, leaving a few niche hi-fi manufacturers and studio console makers to carry the torch for a once-ubiquitous feature.

However, as Technics and JBL have shown us in recent years with their respective turntables and loudspeakers – not to mention the vinyl revival – what’s old is new again. Yamaha has put VU meters on its latest batch of integrated amplifiers. Technics and TEAC pulled the same trick a few years back. Some manufacturers – McIntosh, Luxman, Accuphase and Audio Research – never gave up on the bouncing needles.

What follows is a selection of ten amplifiers (eight loudspeaker, two headphone) that have come to market in the last three years and count VU meters among their feature sets:

TEAC AX-505 (€1499)

A4-size integrated amplifier, Class D (Hypex), 115wpc into ? Ohms.