[nednednerb]

Learning to mix at school looking at the VU meters on the API 2488, I can kinda relate...

However, give me access to a few good references, a loudness meter, and some time, and those are more vital to making way toward a good mix. The VU meter on its own wouldn't make or break things for me. I rarely pull up a digital version. Sometimes I like visual metering at different timescales but that's basically what VU is helping one to model- it doesn't technically have to be that very analog looking VU meter to see the audio levels across different time windows.

Perhaps the name "VU" is misleading here. Good metering is super important. Spectrum, dB, etc, but I remember "at school" learning that VU meant "voltage unit" but that DAWs weren't literally voltages discharging, so it is all just digital metering in a digital system...

But the real important question is "where is any meter and how should I use it"? Or "what kind of meter do you mean? what do you want to see exactly?"

Honestly I'm curious, but it's a little bit of an historical oddity..... I heard the VU representation is more like "seeing RMS" than peak.

Also, there are time settings for the meter display in Preferences, so maybe that could provide the same functionality albeit different appearance.