NAB: TC Electronic’s Thomas Lund to present new broadcast audio papers

TC Electronic’s CTO for Broadcast and Production, Thomas Lund, will be presenting two new papers on broadcast audio loudness at the upcoming NAB show in Las Vegas.

The first paper is titled "Audio Quality in Radio and in Streaming" and was written with the aim to debunk "myths about reach in FM broadcast, and it describes the steps radio and internet stations must take to become part of a solution rather than part of a problem. It’s no longer required to needlessly squash the literal life-giving qualities out of the music in order to prevent level from jumping annoyingly between tracks or announcements."

The paper will be presented 8 April from 11:00 – 11:30am in S228 as part of Broadcast Facilities (Part 1).

The second paper is titled "Loudness vs Speech Normalization in Broadcast" and "presents an empirical study of the differences between level-normalization of programs using the two dominant methods: loudness normalization and speech ("dialog") normalization. Instead of adding to the continuing debate of the subjective merits of one method over the other, important technical aspects are focused on here. The difference in normalization level between the two measures was up to 14 dB. For all films and programs the loudness method provided the greatest headroom. All programs and a majority of the films could be broadcast at a fixed Target level of -24 LKFS without dynamics processing. Not a single film could be broadcast under the same conditions without applying dynamics processing.

"The study furthermore finds a notable and systematic difference between manual speech measurement and automatic speech measurement, in some cases more than 8 dB. Uncertainties in classification, in measurement and in definition are described and compared against the requirements for precision in ITU and ATSC loudness-based standards."

The paper will be presented 9 April from 3:30 – 4:00pm in S227 as part of CALM Compliance Issues.

www.tcelectronic.com