46 TVBEurope Audio for Broadcast Broadcast audiocontrol


If the video engineer needs an expensive monitor with exact colour reproduction so the audio engineer needs a well-calibrated monitor with a perfectly balanced audio signal. Lars-Olof Janflod, Genelec, provides a guide to successful monitoring


TODAY, WE commonly find loudspeakers on the market called monitors, or indeed reference monitors for that matter. In reality, this may well be a rectangular wooden box fitted with drivers of unknown performance, and a price that bears no relation to the components or quality of manufacture. Some unlucky souls will fall


for this, but luckily not all. For something to be called an audio monitor or a reference monitor, its performance needs to be known at the listening position. Unfortunately, manufacturer data is often taken from a controlled environment ie, no mixing consoles, DAWs, flat screens, equipment racks or any of the other things taken into account that cause reflections and affect the frequency response. Typically this manufacturer data is only applicable in an ideal


environment and has no relevance to the real world of the broadcast control room. For a loudspeaker to be a monitor, it must be possible to acoustically align it with the room in which it is being used. Sound travel in a room is a very complex and difficult subject, so


the speakers and your listening position. The distance between your two monitors should be the same as the distance between each of the monitors and your listening position ie, an equilateral triangle with 60° angled corners. So if you stand behind the left monitor and look


Walls, ceilings and floors also


It is not uncommon to find broadcast production being done in a normal office space, which has been created by an interior designer with no knowledge of audio or acoustics


below is a simplified but effective approach to the process of acoustical alignment for optimum monitor performance. The first thing to look for


when you set up a pair of stereo monitors is symmetry in the room, and symmetry between


towards your listening position, what you see should be identical to when you stand behind the right monitor. If there are objects in the way (such as DAW screens) or the distance to side walls and back walls are different, then you will get


different reflection patterns from your monitors and it will be impossible to achieve a similar response from each. The simple advice is; if you have no reflecting objects in between the monitors and your ears, you have a clean audio path.


Audio VisLM-H in the mix at ORF


By Florian Camerer, production sound engineer, ORF


ORF IS Austria’s national public service broadcaster and the dominant player in Austrian broadcast media. The audio post production department at ORF handles everything from small live mixes to grand music mixes — such as the Austrian New Year’s Eve concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra — so every aspect of sound is taken care of! Now that governments all


over the world are instituting requirements for loudness in broadcast, loudness metering has become the new standard. Loudness metering is now mandatory in many countries, so television broadcasters have switched to full loudness


Florian Camerer: Television broadcasters have switched to full loudness metering and normalisation in order to be in compliance


metering and loudness normalisation in order to be in compliance — and ORF is no exception. Since a variety of projects are post produced, a variety of tools is needed, and Nugen Audio’s VisLM-H visual loudness monitoring tool with history


functionality works well in so many situations. At ORF we are fortunate to


have three of the best post studios in broadcasting. Our editing suites are equipped mainly with Avid Pro Tools digital audio workstations, used to finalise all of our work.


(On-location cultural programmes are recorded in Nuendo and then finished in Pro Tools.) The VisLM plug-in drops into our workflow no matter what the project. For smaller mixes, which tend to be mixed ‘as-live’, we route it right through the DAW. Most of the time, though, we use VisLM in offline mode, which means we can use it to analyse and correct a completed mix — also one that contains 5.1 signals. We do a significant amount of our work in surround sound, so the offline functionality is especially handy because it allows us to analyse those signals very quickly. In my work at ORF and as


part of the European standards body for loudness, I’ve had the opportunity to use and evaluate several loudness meters. The


reflect sound and can cause problems in the lower frequency spectrum. This is because the deeper the signal the longer the wavelength, and hence more difficult to control. A 20Hz tone has a wavelength of 17m: at 200Hz its still 1.7m and at 2000Hz 17cm and at 20,000Hz it will be 1.7cm.


So the signal is easier to


control the higher you go in frequency. Low frequencies also travel in all directions — as much forward as backwards. You can check this out for yourself by standing against a hard wall talking into the room.


prerequisite in any case is that the meter fulfills all of the technical requirements we’ve defined in our loudness group, and VisLM does that well. Beyond that, it is one of the few meters that allows you to measure offline rather than in realtime, which is especially helpful when analysing long feature films. In fact, the offline functionality is one of VisLM’s most valuable features. VisLM’s GUI can be customised to suit any user, and it gives me an uncluttered indication of parameters. At ORF we also use VisLM’s optional history feature (VisLM-H) to get an overview of the entire programme, how dynamic the mix is, and where the ups and downs are.


Florian Camerer is chairman of the European Loudness group within the EBU, directly responsible for loudness standardisation in Europe


Lars-Olof Janflod: For a loudspeaker to be a monitor, it must be possible to


acoustically align it with the room


www.tvbeurope.com May 2013


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