442N: The 442’s Nordic Cousin – 2002

“Back when audio products had mechanical meters, different countries/regions had different types of meters – meter colors, scales, and ballistics were different. An American VU meter with its ‘buff’ colored background would never be confused with a black British PPM meter numbered from 1 to 7. We started with LED meters and avoided mechanical meters since LEDs were inherently more reliable and smaller. However, the meter scale remained a very hot topic, and differed markedly from region of the world to region of the world. The only topic that was debated almost as much was ‘left-hand or right-hand meters??’ The 442N was a request from our European friends and featured a metering scale for the Nordic countries laser etched on the front of the unit (we as Americans thought the scale was fairly odd, but it is what our friends wanted) — and this was a very popular model! Today of course things are easier as we have LCDs and OLEDs with generally everything marked in dBFS.”