Rob's Final Exam

A Problem that has become a major source of irritation for Television and Radio audiences around the world

EBU Recommendation R 128

This established a predictable and well-defined method to measure the loudness level for news, sports, advertisements, drama, music, promotions, films etc., throughout the broadcast chain., The fight for “Who is the loudest” disappears, mixes can be more dynamic, and thus there is an overall increase of audio quality!, The idea is that if all music is played back at the same perceived volume, there's no longer an incentive for mix or mastering engineers to compete in these 'loudness wars’.

Very flat, lifeless and even boring when compared with tracks which retain some musical dynamics

the use of musical dynamics.

As loud as possible compared with other commercial material.

User via the volume control

Employing heavy limiting, often combined with some spectral shaping, to increase the average energy level, Minimize the crest factor, or peak-to average ratio.

The average energy level of a track, The higher the average energy level, the louder the track will sound.

European Broadcasting Union

R-128

ATSC's A/85

Loudness Units Full Scale

-23 LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale)

ITU-R BS.1770

This defines a loudness metering algorithm which provides a standardized, objective and reliable means of measuring, comparing and adjusting program loudness.

"Electronic Ear" that perceives audio loudness in much the same way as the average human listener, and it has proved to be very accurate and very reliable.

Enable broadcast automation systems to measure the perceived loudness of supplied programs and advertisements before they were broadcast

Builds a bridge between our subjective impressions of loudness and the need for an objective measurement we can use to make comparisons.

The International Telecommunication Union.

Momentary (M), Short Term (S), Integrated (I)

Averages the loudness over the last 400mS

Averages over 3 seconds.

Is an average over the complete program.

It measures the entire file and gives you an integrated Loudness value.

-16 LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale)

-14 LUFS

Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Youtube

-16 LUFS

Listener’s perception of “audio volume”.

Method of regulating the loudness to be more consistent for the listener.

Improve the audibility of streams on mobile devices.

It is recommended that the Target Loudness of the stream not exceed -16 LUFS

Decibels True Peak

−1.0 dBTP

The encoder creates Over Sample Peaks, The peaks in the file are actually higher than before conversion.

Over 0 and now we have distortion., So even though your master was fine at 24/96, it will not be good at a 250 kbps mp3.

True peak looks at what might have happened between the audio samples.

Meter to read 4 times faster, so making 192 thousand measurements per second enables us to establish what is happening between the samples.

6dB higher than sample peak measurements

True Peak Meter

Identical, The unit of measure “LKFS” can be used instead of “LUFS” for absolute loudness

The actual normalization of the audio signal itself, so that the programs are equally loud on average by design., The use of Loudness Metadata that describe how loud a program is

Decibels relative to full scale measured with a standard digital peak meter.

Decibels relative to full scale measured with a true peak meter.

The ratio of 0 dBFS to the integrated program level of a segment.

The electrically measured average loudness between two points in time.

Gated algorithm

Program Loudness (PL)

Loudness, K-weighted, with reference to digital Full Scale.

ATSC

Loudness range, Describes the variation of loudness levels within a program on a macroscopic scale.

3-second-short-term loudness levels.

Loudness Units, A step of 1 LU is the same as the step of 1 dB

The process of adjusting the loudness of incoming material to conform to a target loudness.

The practice of adjusting the peak level of each program to (usually) full scale or 0 dBFS. This results in widely-varying loudness levels., This practice has been cited as the original cause of loudness wars in broadcast and music production.

Peak to loudness ratio., The ratio of maximum true peak level of a program segment to its integrated ITU-R BS.1770-3 loudness.

A measurement of Integrated Loudness over the entire length of a program. Abbreviated PL.

ITU-R BS.1770-3 algorithm, but with no gating, a sliding rectangular time window of length 3 s.

The intended Integrated Loudness of the entire stream., In mixed-format streams it can also refer to the intended Integrated Loudness of programs having a given format within the stream.

It is recommended that the maximum peak level not exceed −1.0 dB TP: to prevent clipping when using lossy encoders.

Measures the variation of loudness on a macroscopic time-scale, in units of LU (Loudness Units).

Measurement of loudness level with a different relative gating threshold