This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] True peak audio limiter

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Re: [Avid-L2] True peak audio limiter

----- Original Message -----

From: bigfish@pacbell.net [Avid-L2]

"We as an industry have produced the most shitty, ugly sounding mixes in an ongoing loudness war that was based on nothing but an inapt measuring method (PPM), l..."

I think much of the loudness war was by design and not the measuring method. The commercial folks wanted, and probably still do, their spots to appear louder than the neighboring programming to get attention. Right or wrong that was a creative/marketing decision and not a result of using PPMs.

Yes and no. It WAS PPM's, making it possible to hack anotherwise decent standard.

The hacks were exciters / compressors.

Now we have to wait for the next hack to outsmart the new standards.

(and i'm pretty much sure something like this will happen.)

(For Job, 'hidden sound system' comes to mind...)

Bouke

VideoToolShed
van Oldenbarneveltstraat 33
6512 AS NIJMEGEN, the Netherlands
+31 24 3553311

---In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, <Job_L2@...> wrote :

My guess is if these spots were all brickwall-limited to -9dBFS, you would not see much dynamics anyway, and true peaks may indeed not go much higher. However, in the age where we try to even out program loudness without limiting the dynamic range as much as we did, it becomes logical to include an actual limit on the most precisely measured peak. Especially if we want to maintain sound quality when sample rate converting, when transcoding to lossy codecs, and what not. Also, it makes sure that broadcasters don't need to add all kinds of limiters in their chains, which would all affect our mixes.

So is it a question of precision for precision's sake? Somewhat. Given that the new loudness specs allow for -1dBTP as the max, it becomes a whole new game for D-A converters, lossy codecs and sample rate converters, all of which might cause compromized audio quality downstream – not something we should aim for. In the days where we use 8 or 9dBFS of headroom, it was less of an issue, because we had almost no dynamic range left, and plenty of headroom. Now that we can actually USE that headroom and a more sensible dynamic range, it becomes more necessary to be as precise as possible when it comes to the true, actual peaks in the signal. We should all strive for consistent quality, and this is just part of that.

And let me stress that this change to the new loudness measuring is a blessing. We as an industry have produced the most shitty, ugly sounding mixes in an ongoing loudness war that was based on nothing but an inapt measuring method (PPM), losing sight of what matters: how do we want it to sound. Also, much less listening fatigue for both creators and consumers.

Embrace all this stuff, I say.

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