Welcome to Line Up – the only online resource dedicated to audio for broadcast.
If our recent Loudness Summit, which was held in London in the middle of December, taught me anything then it was that all the tools are all in place for sound engineers to deliver loudness-compliant sound without too much trouble. What complicates matters is the reality of modern broadcasting and the individuality of broadcasters. In Europe we have a common and recognised loudness goal to aim for and an undoubted education and training requirement to set the principles straight in the minds of the operators. The biggest of these is the average ‘over time’ rather than instantaneous nature of the loudness metering process, which is not something so dark and dreadful that it will require all mixers to relearn their art but rather another meter to refer to. Most broadcast mixers probably already mix in a loudness compliant manner and they just need a meter to reassure them.
It is the stages before and after the mixing part -- just as in pre-loudness compliant days -- that can create most problems. The use of non-audio optimised operators when preparing material in the feeder stages or in direct-to-air combined with all the sticking points at output of butting idents, programmes of varied and disparate origin, and, of course, the advertisements together that results in the lumpy delivery that the whole exercise is designed to avoid. To me, while there is recognition of the existence of the problem and an understanding of how it has happened it’s almost as if the solution within the context of a whole broadcaster’s infrastructure is so small and subtle that it is near impossible to implement. Give a broadcaster the challenge of going digital, or file-based, and it can grasp it, investigate it, throw some money at it and enforce it. Tell them that they have to nip and tuck a dB or so here and there at any number of stages of production and delivery and many seem almost paralysed by the magnitude of the undertaking.
With loudness we are talking essentially about aesthetic and creative decisions and attitudes; it’s not just a technology solution and that’s where its trickiness lies. Broadcasters have fallen out of practise in thinking and talking in these terms but they are going to have to. If you want to be able to just leave the fader at unity at the end of the chain then you are going to have to be prepared to have conversations, discussions and run training sessions with your audio and non-audio operation staff because they’re the ones that will give and take the dBs required. And the cost of doing loudness right is not great particularly when you contrast it to the investment involved with something like HD, for example.
It’s a time and opportunity for audio folk to influence and have a say in a move towards better sound. Swot up on it and become your department’s expert; somebody has to.
Zenon Schoepe, Editorial Director
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