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14 TVBEurope Loudness Forum


Shout out for loudness


THE QUESTIONS surrounding loudness don’t want to go away. Several European countries have adopted the Technical Delivery Specification for Loudness, but is it working? Are there problems implementing the standard? Where next on this thorny issue? Some people in the industry seem happy to discuss the matter — others are reluctant. We’ve brought


together professionals closely involved with the topic who are happy to air their views. They are (in alphabetical order) Kevin Burrows, CTO broadcast and


distribution, Channel 4, and DPP tech standards lead; Florian Camerer, senior sound engineer, ORF — Austrian TV and chairman EBU group PLOUD; Tim Carroll, CTO The Telos Alliance/ Linear Acoustic; Bob Nicholas, director business development EMEA at Cobalt Digital; Mark Pascoe, senior technical marketing manager, Dolby Laboratories; Steve Plunkett, CTO, Red Bee Media; Peter Schut, CTO and SVP of R&D at Axon; Richard van Everdingen, broadcast and audio consultant.


Burrows: Nothing major, but there are some learning points, such as trust your audio skills and your ears, set your monitoring levels with care to help you hit the right loudness balance point, try to stop using PPMs as soon as you can — this will take a little longer in post, but should be more than offset by a reduction in the time wasted by reworking rejected


In this Forum, Philip Stevens seeks the views of industry experts about the niggling — sometimes baffling — question of loudness


www.tvbeurope.com March 2014


Last October saw all UK national broadcasters accept the DPP’s Technical Delivery Specification on Loudness standards. Although early days, have any significant issues come to light since the implementation of the standard in the UK?


productions — and finally, applause at the end of performances can catch you out on live programmes if the rehearsals had none! Camerer: No significantly


different issues compared to other countries have arisen. The UK has the advantage of being able to draw on the experience of several other European countries and so should avoid


Kevin Burrows, Channel 4; DPP


the most common pitfalls. One approach is similar to France where the tolerance for live is initially +/- 2 LU, and for tape or file-based delivery is +/- 1 LU. This is looser than in R128 — it will be tightened later, but an understandable step to facilitate the transition. Also, R128 is not demanded yet, it is still encouraged. Nicholas: The standard is still in the process of implementation and it is as yet too early to be able to have a view of any potential issues. Plunkett: There has been a


growing consensus that loudness is best dealt with at source, as the solutions that work on the live outputs of a channel don’t generally produce optimum results. Production companies are already expected to satisfy various technical and qualitative measures related to their programming, so this has been an expected and inevitable development. At the moment, everyone is familiarising themselves with new tools and procedures, but no major concerns have been identified. Schut: There are always


problems implementing a new standard and this is no exception. The biggest problem is that it is a complex exercise. Only if the producer of the sound is aware of the loudness requirements will you get good results. Anything that needs to be corrected afterwards — and especially legacy material — will have reasonable to poor results. Also the different formats that need to be supported and the complexity of R128 advice for all different platforms does not help.


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