The Analog VU Level Meter Window — McIntosh Blue and Tube Amber

The pleasure of keeping one more window open

The McIntosh blue concept: a blue backlit glass face with navy scale markings, over a black powder-coated texture.

While music plays there is something worth keeping on screen — not the track title, not a waveform, but a needle that moves with the sound. Reading “−6dB” as a number and watching a needle hover near −6 for a moment are entirely different experiences.

So we built a separate analog VU meter window. It shows the output level of each channel with a needle, and gathers the artwork, track information, transport controls, and — once you make the window taller — a compact playlist in the middle, into one place. There are two colour concepts, McIntosh blue and tube amber, and a single switch moves between them.

Opening it

Choose Window menu → ‘Show Level Meter’ in the menu bar. The shortcut is Cmd+4. While the window is open the same item reads ‘Hide Level Meter’.

The Pine Player status bar icon at the right of the menu bar carries the same item, so you can open the meter even with the player window closed.

The needle behaves like a real meter

This is where most of the work went. Feeding the level value straight into a needle angle only produces a digital bar graph drawn in the shape of a needle. A real VU meter needle is an object with mass on a spring: it rises quickly as the sound swells, overshoots slightly at the peak, and drifts back on its own inertia.

That behaviour is modelled as a spring-damper and integrated at 60Hz — spring constant 190, damping ratio 0.70, chosen so the natural period lands near 0.45 seconds. Stoppers at both ends keep the needle on the face, exactly as the mechanical ones do.

The scale runs from −60dB to 0dB with minor ticks every 2dB, and the region past 0dB is drawn as a separate red arc. Levels are converted with dB = 20log10(amplitude) and mapped across −60 to +3dB. The pivot sits below the face so the sweep is as gentle as the real thing, and the needle casts its own shadow.

Make the window taller and a compact playlist appears in the middle

The window changes shape with its size. Drag the bottom edge down and a compact playlist rises into the space that opens in the middle, between the meters and the bottom bar, with three columns: songs, artist, time.

The playing track is highlighted, and when the track changes the list scrolls to it automatically. Double-click a row to play it. With the window enlarged you can pick and play music from this one window, without opening the player window at all.

Shrink the window and the list disappears again on its own: the moment the leftover height drops below 46pt it hides itself and the compact layout — just meters and artwork — returns. Widening the window grows the meters up to 360pt across and the artwork, kept square, up to 300pt; any space beyond that also goes to the playlist.

What else the window holds

Your output device and the format actually leaving it. Just under the title bar sits one line: output device · mode | bit depth | sample rate. As in the screenshot — “Shanling UA4 · Bit Perfect | 32bit | 48,000Hz” — you can see at a glance where the sound is going and in what form. If the app is set to the system default device, the name of whatever that device currently is gets looked up and shown.

Click the artwork. It cycles through monochrome CRT, colour CRT, and the original image. The CRT modes lay a veil and scan lines over the art, and the monochrome one tints it with the theme's tone — cyan for blue, sepia for amber. Your choice is remembered for next launch. Monochrome CRT is the default.

Seek from the time bar. Elapsed and remaining time sit at either end, and clicking or dragging the bar moves playback to that point.

Format as badges. At the lower right, bit depth, sample rate, and codec appear as separate badges — 24bit · 48k · M4A. When space runs short the leading badges are dropped so the row stays right-aligned.

Levels arrive not only from file playback but also while Direct Stream Capture is taking audio from another app, and during video playback. Opening the window turns level measurement on, so the needles move even if you have the player window's own meter switched off in preferences.

Two colour concepts, and how to switch

The tube amber concept: the backdrop becomes anodized aluminium, and the meter face and accent colour move to amber together.

The control is the small slide switch at the far right of the bottom bar. It holds two colour dots; press the side you want and the window changes on the spot. (Hover for a ‘Meter Color’ tooltip.) The choice is saved and carries over to the next launch.

More than the meter face changes. The scale ink, the needle, the glass bezel, and the channel labels move together with the window's accent colour — track title, transport buttons, seek and volume bars, playlist text and headers, and the format line.

McIntosh blue is a blue backlit glass face with navy markings. The backdrop is a black powder-coated texture, filled with a 96×96 grain tile to give matte paint its surface. Past 0dB the segments run from light grey into dark grey.

Tube amber puts brown markings on an amber face. The backdrop becomes anodized aluminium: matte dark metal with a shallow brushed grain, a satin reflection, and vignetting toward the edges. Past 0dB the ramp is a deep reddish brown. The grain is derived from row position, so it never shimmers when the window moves or redraws.

Both screenshots are the same window, the same track, the same moment. Only the switch moved.

In the free edition

The window opens normally, and the track title, artist, artwork, playback time, playlist, and format information all appear. The needles stay still, though, and the transport buttons, seek bar, volume, and colour switch are locked, with a Pro notice when the window opens. Watching the needles move needs Pine Player Pro.

In closing

The level meter window was built to be left on, not to be consulted. Open it with Cmd+4, pick the colour you like, and drag it taller once to bring out the compact playlist in the middle. We hope it earns a place beside you while the music plays.