BFM

What it does

A metering plugin built to be read from across the room. Six modes cover text values, traditional bars, a waveform view, VU meters, a spectrum analyzer and a time readout with samples, bars, beats and sample rate. RMS, peak, peak hold and the LUFS family are available with adjustable sensitivity, and any page can be frozen with a tap and reset by clicking the value.

In the demo

Jade opens six instances at once so every mode is visible together, then works through them on a full project. She spends time on what LUFS actually means and the levels streaming services normalise to, customises fonts and meter colours, and sets it on the output bus in both AUM and Logic Pro.

Worth knowing

It measures and does not process, so it is a monitoring tool rather than anything that changes the sound. The desktop version sells for around twenty dollars on the OSC Audio Gumroad store.