The reason these loudness standards matter to you dear music maker is that online streaming platforms appear to be adopting loudness controls of their own, and there are ramifications for ignoring this fact if you continue to maximize loudness via brickwall limiting, or mix to arbitrary peak levels. This drive by the broadcast industry to measure, quantify and control loudness is to make sure that all programme material is consistently loud, so that it is not necessary to reach for the volume remote every time programme material changes on TV-yes we are looking at you obnoxiously loud adverts and film trailers. These tests results were compared against measurements taken with the Leq(RLB) loudness algorithm and the results were found to be very close to subjective human hearing.
#Izotope insight dbspl tv#
The algorithms are based on the results of real world listening tests, where people were asked to match the volume of various test signals to a reference signal at a level of 60 dBA-the average level of a TV at home. The algorithms it outlines are at the core of loudness standards around the world EBU R-128 in Europe, ATSC A/85 in the US, and TR-B32 in Japan, to name a few. Yup, the robots have come for our ears, and I for one welcome our new overlords. With all the different meters on the market, 'what' are we actually measuring? 'What' levels are we targeting? And who’s turning our 'what' down now? What You Need To KnowĪ set of filtering algorithms recommended by the International Telecommunication Union and specified in the ITU-R BS.1770-4 document “Algorithms to measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level” have, for want of better phrasing, automated and quantified loudness perception. If you are working in film, mix on speakers calibrated to 85 dB SPL (or is it 79 dB SPL?), and if you do commercial audio then you must ask the radio/broadcaster for their platform specifications, usually -18 dBFS peak, but that depends.Īlso, it has been rumoured, if you exceed certain levels the EBU-R128 loudness standard (and its US and Japanese counterparts ) will just turn your mix down anyway, so…. What's going on?
There are also many recommended mix levels floating around forums and audio websites mix so your peaks don’t exceed -6 dB for the mastering engineer (to leave headroom for post processing), or is it -12 dB? If you do your own “mastering” don’t exceed -0.1 dBFS because of intersample peaks, no wait -0.3 dBFS is better, actually -0.5 is really where it works best for conversion to low bitrate MP3 and iTunes AAC. Decibels are bewildering enough, and terms like LUKS, LUFS, LU, LRA and dBTP aren’t making things any easier to understand.