Sound Meter

Juce peak meter module with optional fader overlay.
by Marcel Huibers | Sound Development 2023 | Published under the MIT License

Features:

• Fully resize-able.
• Adaptive. Will show header, value, tick-marks only when there is space available.
• Unlimited number of user defineable segments, with custom ranges and configurable colours or gradients.
• Efficient. Only redraws when needed.
• Configurable meter ballistics (meter decay).
• Tick-marks (dividing lines on the meter) at user specified levels.
• Peak hold indicator and optional peak value readout.
• Optional label strip next to the meters (which can double as master fader).
• Optional header identifying the meter's name (set by user) or channel type.
• Optional fader and mute button (in the header).

You can find the API documentation here...
An example project, demonstrating sound_meter can be found here...

Usage

All classes are in the namespace sd::SoundMeter to avoid collisions. You can either prefix each symbol, or import the namespace.

MetersComponent

The MetersComponent class creates and controls the meters. This would live in your editor.h.

private:
   sd::SoundMeter::MetersComponent  m_meters;

In the constructor you can specify a channel format with setChannelFormat or set the nummer of channels with setNumChannels:

m_meters.setChannelFormat (juce::AudioChannelSet::stereo());

and configure it's options: (for all meter options, see documentation)

sd::SoundMeter::Options meterOptions;
meterOptions.faderEnabled     = true;
meterOptions.headerEnabled    = true;
meterOptions.showTickMarks    = true;
m_meters.setOptions (meterOptions);

and configure the segments:

std::vector<sd::SoundMeter::SegmentOptions> segmentOptions = 
{ // From bottom of the meter (0.0f) to the half. Displaying -60 dB up to -18 dB.
  { { -60.0f, -18.0f }, { 0.0f, 0.5f }, juce::Colours::green, juce::Colours::green }, 
  // From half of the meter to almost the top (0.9f). Displaying -18 dB up to -3 dB.
  { { -18.0f, -3.0f }, { 0.5f, 0.90f }, juce::Colours::green, juce::Colours::yellow },
  // From almost the top to the top of the meter (1.0f). Displaying -3 dB up to 0 dB.
  { { -3.0f, 0.0f }, { 0.90f, 1.0f }, juce::Colours::yellow, juce::Colours::red } };    
m_meters.setMeterSegments (segmentOptions);

Finally (still in the constructor) we add the component and make it visible:

addAndMakeVisible (m_meters);

In the resized() method, you set the bounds (left, right, width, height) of the meters:

m_meters.setBounds (getLocalBounds());

Getting the levels

Basically everything is set up now.
All left to do now is to supply the meter with the level with the method: setInputLevel (int channel, float value);

The recommended way to get the levels from the audio processor is to let the editor poll the audio processor (with a timer for instance). Preferably it would poll atomic values in the audio processor for thread safety.

A fully working example demonstrating this can be found here...

---

Sound Development 2023