Reported: no activity in the master meter.
Cause: `MasterLevel` measures the buffer the ENCODER receives, and that buffer only exists while the
mix is being pulled — streaming or recording. Idle, nothing fills it, so the master read zero while
the bays below it moved. A master that is dead between sessions is a gap in the design.
Now: while a session runs the master shows the measured mix (unchanged); idle it shows an estimate
computed from the same measured sources and the same gains the mix applies
(`MeterScale.MonitorFraction`, pure + tested). Two ladders can therefore never tell contradictory
stories about whether audio exists.
Guard: MeterScaleTests pins the estimate — silence reads zero, a quiet source at unity is visible,
two sources add, and gain is applied in the LINEAR domain like the mix (scaling the display fraction
would be a different, wrong curve).
Reported: the TRAX bar moves, but its sampling looks far slower than the mic meter.
Cause: the TRAX number was a raw instantaneous peak per metering block — a stutter sampled by the UI
timer, with no smoothing. The mic looks fluid because it is smoothed at audio-callback rate.
Fix: the player now smooths its measured level with the SAME curve the mic uses
(MeterScale.NextLevel: fast attack, gentle decay), and the dock's meter clock runs at ~30 Hz instead
of 20. Two ladders that move alike, because they are the same ballistics.
Guard: MeterScaleTests pins the attack/decay behaviour alongside peak-hold.
`Controls/SegmentMeter` draws a 24-segment ladder in ONE OnRender pass — no per-segment elements
updating on the UI thread, which is the difference between a meter and a UI thread tax. Level and
peak are display fractions (what was MEASURED), never gain settings; vertical for the bay ladders,
horizontal for the master strip.
Bands come from `Helpers/MeterScale` (nominal/caution/peak, DESIGN.md thresholds) and live as
dependencies of the control, so the painting logic is pure and testable: the band a segment paints
is the level it measured. Brushes resolve from the theme tokens via SetResourceReference, so the
ladder cannot drift from DESIGN.md.
Peak-hold is the reason the header exists: a bar that follows the moment hides clipping, and
clipping is the one audio fault that cannot be fixed after the stream.
Guard: MeterScaleTests — band edges (inclusive at −12 and −3, as the standard states the ranges),
the −60…0 display scale, and peak-hold rising instantly then decaying at 0.35/s.
gramps