# CANTA 0.2.1

First release since 0.1.0, which had carried every build since bring-up. The
version now moves with the firmware.

## VU meter

**The analogue needle no longer tears.** On fast movements the needle showed a
shear at a fixed point about a third down from the tip. The screen VU is painted
as two bands, and the needle was the only style whose picture crossed the
boundary between them — with each band's copy timed against the raster
independently, that boundary was a boundary in time. The needle is now drawn as
one band, which is also about 6% cheaper to render than the bug was.

**The peak marker falls more slowly.** It crossed the whole scale in 2 seconds
(30 dB/s), which is fast for a peak indicator; broadcast meters sit far slower.
It now takes 6 seconds (10 dB/s) and holds 1.2 s at a new maximum instead of
0.8 s. Most visible on the needle.

**The near-limit band and the peak marker are now two different colours, and
both are adjustable.** Previously the display had exactly one colour — the amber
"near limit" band — and the peak marker had to borrow it, so inside that band the
marker disappeared. The marker now has its own hue: the band is the crimson of a
printed VU face's over-0 arc, the marker stays gold. Both are stored settings and
can be changed over the console without a rebuild or a reboot.

**Amber now actually reaches the panel on the grid styles.** The BANDS and
SPECTRUM grids reserved a single row for the near-limit band while the bar and
dot styles reserve the top ~17%. Because the peak marker sits on top of the band,
that one row was always covered and the colour never showed. The grids now use
the same proportion as the other styles.

Grids of five rows or fewer still reserve a single row, so the smallest strip
meters continue to show no near-limit colour of their own — the marker's new hue
is what reads as "near limit" there.

## Housekeeping

- Removed the mock-data VU test pattern left over from the meter's prototype,
  along with its console commands. Its pixel-regression coverage was rebuilt from
  the real meter first, so nothing lost a test.
- About 2.5 KB of RAM recovered.
- Cutting a release no longer disturbs the UI pixel baselines.

## Notes

Settings are preserved across the update. No configuration changes are required.