Recently I posted about mine and others experiences of starting to mix content to the new loudness specs to see how easy or otherwise it would be.
Well there has been an interesting thread on the Linked In Pro Tools Users group which has some interesting posts on it.
Firstly here are links to the key documents. The R128 spec for Europe from the EBU and the ATSC spec for the US.
Other useful articles are the EBU loudness site and an article in TV Technology which will be of more use to our US friends.
Huibert Boon posted…..
We use 3 different ‘solutions’ to comply to the new requirements:
1. External multichannel TW Hardwaremeter with LUFS-reading on our HD-set.
2. NuGen software-meter on our ‘LE’ set. Comprehensive metering with ‘history-log’.
3. RTAS-plug-in that is as simple as the standard ‘gain’-plug-in, from our good friend Eelco Grimm, who helped to create the R128 standard.
We love R128, because it finally frees us from the loudness-war: no more pushing the limiters at -9dBFS!
Now this new “LevelNorm” plug-in from Eelco Grimm is one I haven’t come across and comes across as a very useful plug-in to correct a mixed file that comes out as slightly too high or too low.
“LevelNorm brings the loudness normalization revolution right into your Avid workstation. This AudioSuite plugin is equally suited for Protools, Media Composer and News Cutter systems. Compliance to EBU R128, ATSC A/85 and CALM act requirements has never been so fast, easy and affordable!”
 loudness normalization with or without offset |
| EBU R128 and ATSC A/85 version |
| mono, stereo or multichannel |
| easy user interface suitable for video editors |
| processing up to 100x real time on standard PC’s |
| PC and Mac |
| Protools 8 or Media Composer 5.5 and higher |
Tim Altman also posted…
Most stuff mixed for the old standard – as loud as possible with a brick wall limiter at -10 – will come in way too hot for -23 LKFS. You will find a lot of old mixes come in at -20 to -18 LKFS. The nice thing about the new spec is you can have peaks going up much higher: -6 or even -3, depending on the network.
With the new -8 relative gate added, it’s a little tricky to get around the spec though. My original thought was to use the increased dynamic range to increase the overall level by injecting periods of silence or low levels into the mix. However, it seems that those sounds will now be gated out of the averaging. So I guess they have really covered all their bases. And we are left to just following the spec. Oh well. The good news though is that the dynamic range is greatly increased on the top end. Makes for some pretty awesome sounding mixes. I’m a big fan of the new spec.
This I find very interesting and it reinforces the experiments I and others have done so it os good to see that others are finding similar answers. On the subject of peak limiting William Flageollet posted….
Currently, there is a plug-in cheap and good to limit to -3 dBTP from Flux is Elixir The hardware solutions are very expensive but it will spend in the future
I would be very interested to hear about your experiences in the whole loudness area, good or bad, what tools and workflows you find useful.
Mike is Pro Tools genius and an award winning ‘audiomeister’, defined as ‘a person of great skill and authority in sound’. His vast array of credits include music (from classical to rock), drama and documentaries across all the BBC Radio networks, as well as audio post production for video and TV, ‘new media’, live sound, commercial CDs, DVDs and podcasts, helping clients tell their stories with sound. He has been described as "an oasis of calm in a stormy creative world"; "quick, creative & easy to work with"; "always going the extra mile"; and "invests himself in the success of your project"’.show me less content in the footer
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