If you are working with audio a lot, then most of the time, the numbers are meaningless, and you are going by 'feel' and using your ears as the sensory feedback

If you are working with audio a lot, then most of the time, the numbers are meaningless, and you are going by 'feel' and using your ears as the sensory feedback mechanism. Can you tell me how many dB's you need to set your volume at in your office environment in order to be able to hear above the background hubbub? At home? In the car? That sort of thing changes from day to day and situation to situation. Very often when I plug in my guitar into my amp, I will twiddle the knobs without even looking at the respective numbers. I just know that I have to adjust the bass, middle or treble EQ to suit the room, and will do so without looking. Often if I get a setting that sounds really sweet, I will look at, and write down the settings for future reference, but it is all done after the fact. The same goes for if I am using a software amp modelling sim on my PC or iPad etc. Twiddle while listening, then save the snapshot later if I am happy with it. I don't want a finicky interface to get in the way of my experimenting and twiddling. And yes, VU meters are also extremely useful when recording etc. in order to get a real time view of peaks and spikes in an audio track. Ask anybody who uses a DAW regularly.