There must be something quite fundamental I am missing. I am using the medanalogvumeter with the 0dB frame set as 52 / 80 and the custom view set as the default AnalogMeterView_H65_Z52.

It appears that the 0dB mark is actually hitting at  the end of the meter @3dB. I have attached an image : 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sMvYzrX0wnc9Bo9Cj30atXoWJovkD_gU/view?usp=sharing

I am just exploring a way to display peak as per above. I was starting to look into writing custom stuff under the advanced GUI stuff to create a label for this but thought it should be as simple as linking a meter to the text label. This led me to this scenario in which I MUST be doing something stupidly wrong.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, I cannot find anything in the book or online that uses this.

C.

So the bottom line is that I cannot simply create a Label, make an audio detector set to Log mode (dB) and set its output to the label so that it measures the level of the outgoing audio as a dB value -60db to + whatever dB.

It requires a custom class / view? Seems crazy to me that a label cannot take the reading of the non normalised meter reading! I will have to look into the inheritance and CPP more! 

I am going to look at the dirty led project and see if that can help me make my label work in db levels.

If it needs to be connected to a meter.. in theory it makes sense to me to connect it to a AnalogMeter as it should go above 0, which is seen in rackafx, but this doesnt seem to be the case for me when I put the class in.....

So taking what Jim said; 

I have for now replaced the draw function inside the VuMeterEx inside 'Customcontrols.cpp'

UTF8String s; // declares a string named s

float xt = getValue();

//--- convert to dB
float yt = 20 * log10(xt * 100);

//--- perform 00.00 String instead of 00.00000000000
std::stringstream stream;
stream << std::fixed << std::setprecision(2) << yt;
s = stream.str();

CRect r = (getViewSize()); //declares a rectangle the size of the view

CFontRef fntt = new CFontDesc("Arial", 12); /// since the meter has no font select in the VSTGUI interface we manually choose it

_pContext->setFillColor(kBlackCColor); // checkout the CColor object for more control

float t = s.length() * .25f; // compensates the text length
float h = fntt->getSize(); // compensates the font height

CGraphicsTransform transf; // declares a transform. The only way to reposition text from (0,0)
transf.translate(r.getCenter().x - (h * t), r.getBottomCenter().y - (h)); // calls the transforms translate function to center the text within the view

CDrawContext::Transform transp(*_pContext, transf); // actually applies the centering

_pContext->drawGraphicsPath(_pContext->createTextPath(fntt, s), CDrawContext::kPathFilled); // draws it up

setDirty(false);

Which gives me a readout yay. I scale up the input then convert to db. 

Next:

I scaled out output into the meter inside 'Plugincore.cpp', I scaled it by 100.

// --- VU metering
leftVUMeterIn = processFrameInfo.audioInputFrame[0]/100;
leftVUMeterOut = processFrameInfo.audioOutputFrame[0]/100;

The next thing I need to do is figure out how to display the generally highest level over a certain time. I currently cant read the output as it changes so fast as it oscillates. I next have to figure out how to add ballistics. I am not sure if I need to add something extra in 'plugingui.cpp' to do stuff there like thew others under custom views line 1945 and below.

I think for the RMS and even the Peak I need something like this; 

float* channelData = buffer.getWritePointer(0);  < replace this for buffer
float sum = 0.0;
float totalSum = 0.0;

for (int i = 0; i < buffer.getNumSamples(); i++)   < number of samples inside the buffer
{
float sample = channelData[i];
sum += sample * sample;
}

for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
if (i < 99) {
sumVector[i] = sumVector[i + 1];
}
else {
sumVector[99] = sum;
}
totalSum += sumVector[i];
}

rmsLevel = std::sqrt(totalSum / (buffer.getNumSamples() * 100));

I think the ideal way to call this would be to call it in the post buffer and perform the RMS calculation on all of the samples in that buffer. For peak it would be a matter of performing some form of max, min either side of the 0 dB mark, (+-), but I am unsure how cpp/buffers completely work atm.

The last thing I need to figure out is how to create this as something I can add to meters as and when I need to and to provide a custom font / sizing for each instance.

I will update this post as I discover more. I am surprised this has not come up before!

C.