Loudness Standards and How They Relate to Me

Loudness standards are an extremely important topic in the audio industry - it's something that you hear a lot about and if you're creating for a medium that requires you to adhere to loudness standards it;s imperative that you do so. That is why today I would like to talk little bit more about loudness standards, and what better to use as an example than the standard for broadcast on Australian TV.

When talking about loudness standards for Australian TV there is one operating practice which is vital to be aware of and fully understand. This is known as OP59. OP59 outlines a wide range of things, including;

- Why loudness standards are important

- What recommendations you are required to adhere to

- That chosen metering software need to comply with recommendations

- How different types of content may be metered

But to get into the specifics so much more of this can make sense, it explains;

- In Australia the metering standard for television broadcast is ITU-r BS.1770

- That under this standard no content shall exceed -24LKFS

So let's run a little experiment. What I'm going to do is take a song that I recorded for an artist Kelsey Berrington, and pretend that it is going to be the soundtrack for a commercial that is to be aired on Australian TV.

Firstly here's the song, without any tampering from me the tracks LKFS or LUFS (whichever you would like to use) is 5.5 according to MLoudnessAnalyser by MediaProduction. To get that down to -24LKFS is going to be quite extensive.

So I brought adjusted the track until I got an integrated reading of -24LKFS and this is what I ended up with.

To be completely hones tit's much quieter than I first expected, but that's what the meter says so I just have to trust it!

So there it is, a quick glimpse into relevant loudness standards within Australia and a quick illustration of what these standards look like. For more information on Loudness Standards, check out the following links - they really helped me.

http://www.sandymilne.com/op-59-and-loudness-standards-for-australian-tv/

http://www.freetv.com.au/media/Engineering/OP59_Measurement_and_management_of_Loudness_in_Soundtracks_for_Television_Broadcasting_-_Issue_1_-_July_2010.pdf