The Stream player (the window that opens to play a stream from the Listen Live page, see pictures below) offers a new feature: a VU meter that represents the audio level of the stream. It can be turned on by clicking on the “Show Meter” button.
To turn the VU meter off, scroll down a little until you see the “Hide Meter” button. The VU meter is off by default.
The purpose of the VU meter is to help adjust the audio level at the entry point to the Streamer. That is done by physically adjusting the signal level that is fed to the Streamer sound card. There is no adjustment on the Streamer itself or on the sound card, therefore, the level has to be adjusted by you before it gets into the Streamer.
The peaks should be between -12 and -6
Here are good and bad examples of audio levels:
Good examples for music (left) and speech (right).
Bad examples! Too loud (left) or too quiet (right).
Bad examples! Signal on one channel only. It should be stereo and similar on both left and right channels.
Obviously, you also want to have consistent audio levels between programs and between speech and music. That is another topic. You can learn about that by looking into Loudness.
If you have questions, please send an email to tech <à> galcom <.> org