Loudness has continued to be a talking point during 2011 and the year ends with a conference this Friday (16th December) to discuss the problems faced in delivering good quality, consistent sound to TV viewers, writes Kevin Hilton. The Loudness Summit takes place at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London and is chaired by Florian Camerer, senior sound engineer at ORF and chair of the EBU PLOUD group.
Randy Conrod, product manager for digital products at Harris, will give the keynote speech. His presentation, Loudness Management in Today’s Systems, will look at "Why the Loudness Issue is a Collision of Biology and Technology", "Equal loudness curves/Weighted curves (LEQ)/Dial norm related to ITU BS 1770 loudness measurement" and "Why Dial Norm Doesn’t Work Well".
Other topics during the day include: Loudness Issues from the Viewer’s Perspective (Phil Greene, Lead Technologist, BBC Technology Division), End-to-End Loudness Control (Jeffrey Riedmiller, director of the Sound Platform Group at Dolby Laboratories) and a case study on Deploying Loudness in France from Matthieu Parmentier, innovations and developments manager at France Télévisions.
Tim Carroll (pictured), president and founder of Linear Acoustic, will speak on Delivering Consistent Sound to the Consumer on Any Device, Any Time, Anywhere. Carroll feels that over the past year loudness issues have done one good thing, brought "television audio into sharp focus". He adds that this extends beyond traditional over-the-air broadcasting to include delivery of sound and pictures using cable, satellite, mobile and the internet.
Carroll agrees that how loudness is dealt with is still evolving, saying, "I think it is really beyond any new fundamental discoveries about loudness metering itself but is about how to practically apply it all and for what goal. The basic aim should be to satisfy consumers - this would then satisfy regulators. The challenge then remains doing this whilst protecting the artistic integrity of the programming."
