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RME is a major player in the professional recording business. They use standard VU meters in their purely digital monitoring software, and there are many other software VU meter plugins for digital workstations. To say it’s not legit in the digital world is simply wrong.

RME Digicheck example.
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So, what is the dB value when all 24/32 bits are ones?

For sure not the +20 dB (or something) shown by the WiiM Ultra.

Edit: To answer my own question, then when a digital signal peaks at -18 dBFS, the VU meter needle should be at or near 0 VU.
 
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Again, VU meters are perfectly legit in the digital toolchain. Here's as good an explainer as any:

At first sight, if you’ve got the combined loudness meter, you don’t need a VU meter. The loudness meter is super high tech, lots of graphs, numbers and lights. But let me give you an analogy: When mobile phones first came out, loads of Millennials, ditched their wrist watches and embraced the new tech; if they needed to know the time, they could just look at their phone. But as time passed, they started wearing their watches again. Why? Because they realized that they didn’t want to find and open their phone to find out its 19:48:32, they just wanted to quickly glance at their watch to see it’s about 10 to 8.

A proper analogue VU works the same way. When it’s properly setup, you can just glance at it to work out if you’re running too hot or not. You don’t need to stare or interpret numbers, a glance is sufficient. This keeps you focused on working with the music with your ears, not worrying about numbers with your eyes.

 
Again. It needs to show correct values.

If not showing something you can relate to (dBFS), then it is just something moving to the music.
Of course, as stated in everything I've linked, it is a standard and needs to be properly calibrated to be useful. WiiM has some work to do on theirs, obviously, but VU meters are 100% legit in the digital path.
 
Again, VU meters are perfectly legit in the digital toolchain. Here's as good an explainer as any:



I stopped wearing a watch when the cell in my Seiko Kinetic died. Having already replaced it once two or three years earlier I'd had enough. So much for the never buy batteries again marketing spiel. Replacement cells are much more expensive than watch batteries.
 
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