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FEATURE PRODUCTION


into the basic specification. Florian Camerer, chairman of the P/LOUD group that developed the standard, comments that this process was due to happen “within a month or so” following two meetings in Vienna during early March. The supporting technical documents – 3341, defining Loudness Metering; 3342, covering Loudness Range and loudness normalisation; 3343, describing Production and Implementation; and 3344 for Distribution of Programmes – will be updated after this. In terms of adoption of R128 for TV, Camerer says “the deployment is still moving fast”. Finland began using the standard last autumn, while this year saw two TV stations in Slovakia and broadcasters in Catalonia following suit. According to Camerer, Norway is on the way to full take-up, with the television sector set to begin gradual R128 operations before the summer. Among the countries he describes as “gearing up” is Poland, with, he adds, the UK “more and more normalised” due to the DPP specs. Outside Europe, South


Africa started to use the full R128 spec from late July last year, beginning with commercials. “This will be spreading and eventually everything will be R128 in South Africa within a few years,” Camerer notes. “Hopefully that spreads over the continent.” He has also given training sessions in Venezuela and Colombia, where he says interest was “very high”. In the US, Congress passed


the CALM (Commercial Advertisement Loudness


Mitigation) Act into law in December 2010 but the power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fine broadcasters for loudness transgressions did not come into force until 2012. The technical aspects of the CALM Act are based on ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) A/85, which, like R128, was derived from 1770 but works to the target of -24 LUFS (Loudness unit relative to Full Scale), rather than -23. Tim Carroll, president of loudness system manufacturer Linear Acoustic, has been a keen proponent of regulation and control. He comments that CALM is “now going about as well as can be expected”. He explains that the initial version had the unintended consequence of sometimes causing more audio processing in the name of compliance. “The newer version largely remedied that by reiterating that there is a +/-1 or 2dB tolerance and that measurements are average and should in fact move around a bit,” he says. What the legislation in the US did do, Carroll observes, is bring the general topics of loudness and audio quality into the consciousness of those producing sound. “Broadcasters often had limited power to require changes to content and so they ended up heavily relying upon ‘automated’ means to deliver compliance. A machine can make a meter happy but perhaps not the audience. A trained audio mixer can do both,” he adds. Carroll concludes that people are still learning and getting their footing: “We are making sure to describe that


Tim Carroll, Linear Acoustic


“A machine can make a meter happy but perhaps not the audience. A trained audio


mixer can do both” Tim Carroll,


Linear Acoustics


loudness is a process and that you cannot just rely on a single device to correct upstream errors and expect the highest quality. There are tools for every step in the chain, and the better it is at each stage, the higher the quality and more natural the compliance.” During IBC 2013 Linear


Acoustic showed its AERO.lite SDI loudness controller, while other leading manufacturers in the field also introduced new products or updated existing ranges. RTW launched a firmware update for the SurroundControl 31900 and 31960 series and is due to unveil a new product during this year’s NAB. New from DK-Technologies was the 7in T7 meter, while Jünger Audio announced it was to develop hardware platforms onto which specific firmware for applications such as loudness can be loaded.


DK-Technologies’ 7in T7 meter 30 April 2014


RADIO RAGE As loudness monitoring and control in television becomes more established, attention is starting to move to other areas where inconsistent sound levels have also been a problem. Radio has been a cause for concern in this regard for some time. Not only are there inconsistencies between speech, music, commercials, and jingles, particularly as many stations


now do not have engineers or technical operators running audio desks to correct any lapses on the part of DJs and presenters, but there are the additional problems of output compression and the amount of coding used in digital transmission. Add to this modern commercial music recordings that have little or no dynamic range – the cause of the dreaded ‘loudness sausage’ – and the task of bringing some normalisation to the airwaves looks to be even bigger than what happened in TV. Some pioneering steps have been taken in Norway, where the three DAB digital radio operators, public broadcaster NRK and its commercial counterparts P4 group and SBS, agreed in February 2012 to monitor and report their own and each other’s output for loudness compliance. This mutual agreement does not involve any regulatory bodies and is based on R128, although working to -15 LUFS rather than -23. Speaking at last year’s Radio Academy TechCon in Salford, Bjorn Aarseth, a senior engineer with NRK, explained that although R128 clearly specifies -23, radio content is very different from that of TV sound. He added that radio listeners might also need a lower dynamic range. Aarseth observed that radio normalisation was cheap and easy to achieve; under the agreement the three broadcasters monitor each other and, if necessary, complain about something outside the target, which is then corrected by the party concerned. He said this was keeping the listeners happy, at least in meaning there were no complaints about loudness. Florian Camerer hopes that when Norway moves to full DAB+ transmission and switches off its FM networks the target level will be reduced to -23. He adds that field tests will take place in Sweden this autumn, with all stations – both public and commercial – evaluating R128 for “a few weeks”. He hopes that if that is successful, it might act as a role model for other countries. Some countries are already


beginning to use loudness normalisation in production during this year, among them France and Germany, while in the UK BBC R&D has been testing loudness monitoring to -23 on the Radio 4 network. It took some time for


broadcasters to get to grips with loudness but now momentum is gathering in radio as well as TV, but there is still a way to go until complete compliance and the point where the home volume control has very little to do. As one industry insider has said, this is the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.


LOUDNESS: THE GLOBAL SITUATION


EUROPE The EBU R128 developed by the European Broadcasting Union has been adopted across the continent with early adopters introducing regulations as early as 2011. Works towards -23 LUFS.


AFRICA Full R128 spec adoption in South Africa from July 2013 with hope it will spread across the continent.


US


The CALM Act, based on ATSC A/85, was passed into law in December 2010 with FCC enforcement beginning 13 December 2012. Works towards -24 LUFS (rather than -23 LUFS in Europe).


AUSTRALIA Full compliance of the FreeTV OP-59 standard (derived from ITU BS 1770) was implemented on 1 January 2013. OP-59 recommends a speech- based as well as a universal approach to audio normalisation.


JAPAN The TR-B32 standard builds on ITU BS.1770-2, which means a relative gate is employed. Target level is -24 LUFS as opposed to -23 LUFS of the EBU R128 standard.


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