No, the meters work you just have to watch them they are small, the AD-20 starts out w/ gain before you even add any w/ the pots, read up somewhere it tells you what the ad-20 puts out for gain at the lowest setting, I found out the hard way and had to use 10 decibal pads from there on, this ad-20 > jb3 is a good situation for a view meter like the svu-1 or 2, line out of the jb3 to keep more accurate levels.