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Quiet Victories Won In the Loudness Wars
Stowie101 writes with a few pieces from an article on what's been happening in the fight against over-compressed radio music and deafening tv commercials: "The first major step towards the elimination of heavily-compressed music could be the International Telecommunications Union's ... measurement of loudness that was ... revised in 2011. ... Acting to rectify the problem on the broadcast side of the issue, many European and Asian broadcasters are adopting loudness standards that are based on the criteria first introduced by the ITU. Here in the U.S., the federal government has also been proactive to improve the quality of broadcast television. By the end of 2012, the broadcast community will have to follow the CALM Act that requires commercials to be played at the same volume as broadcast television. In terms of music and recording, these broadcast standards do not apply. But Shepherd theorizes the measurement standards will be applied to the production of music. 'Measuring loudness, in general, isn't easy. Now the ITU has agreed on a new "loudness unit:" the LU. You can measure short- and longer-term loudness over a whole song. They've also agreed on guidelines for broadcast; what the average loudness should be and how much you can vary it. The recommendation has been made law in the U.S. for advertisements and is also being adopted in the U.K. and all over the world. All the major broadcasters here — Sky, the BBC, ITV — have agreed to follow the standard.'"
I'm a broadcast tech at a license-funded TV station in Norway, so we don't have to deal with advertising volume jumps, but in general, we aim to follow the already-established EBU recommendation 128, which specifies loudness.
Indeed, the spec is publically available: http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf
toresbe
A section of historic FCC rules for radio is here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Sbw8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=steps+shall+be+taken+to+preserve+dynamic+characteristics+of+music&source=bl&ots=B2uXF56uEj&sig=K4gC8p4b1LaXyTTt6VsgnNFpdO4&hl=en
The phrase "However, precautions shall be taken so as not to substantially alter the dynamic characteristics of musical programs" was removed after being in the rules only a short time. Many broadcasters protested, wanting to use very aggressive audio processing. Sometime it was to sound loud than the competition (doesn't work when everyone does it), sometimes it was to help hide the noises present with a marginal signal.
There were past loudness rules for ads. Here are the full details of what's being proposed for DTV now. DTV audio has generally been better and more dynamic. However when programs are dynamic, the average loudness is lower, making commercials stand out even more.
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/06/03/2011-13822/implementation-of-the-commercial-advertisement-loudness-mitigation-calm-act
> And no real gain.
Except pre-recorded music that doesn't sound like shit on quality stereo gear.
This is actually an example of *good* legislation. The whole reason the "loudness war" happened in the first place was pressure from upper management on recording engineers (who, by and large, knew why doing it was bad, and who were mostly forced to go along with it if they wanted to remain employed) to make their next CD a little louder than everybody else's, until we got to the point where a 2004 pop CD was quantized to levels once exclusively the realm of a Telarc *DIGITAL CANON* in a recording of 1812 Overture whose main purpose was to show off your kilowatt-RMS amp and array of subwoofers. What the government did in this case was let the engineers off the hook. When management asks them to "pump up the volume", they can say, "Sure, I can do that. But no radio station in the country will play it, and all the money we're spending to promote the artist will be for naught. Do you still want me to do it, or would you like me to master a recording that sounds good and that radio stations will be able to play?"
I want immersive, clipping-free digital audio back like we had when I was in college. If it literally takes an act of Congress to ensure that 95% of the audio on a 16-bit CD quantizes to an absolute value of 0x3FFF or less, so be it. Now get off my lawn, or I'll have to remind your parents what digital canons sound like when you have a kilowatt (RMS) amp and a pair of 18-inch JL Audio subs in the trunk...