[oldmp3]

I've not found this particular topic discussed here, so thought I would post something I stumbled upon recently.  Forgive me if I have missed it.

We are familiar with concern about the "Loudness Wars" in the production of CD and digital music and the increasing loudness and corresponding loss of dynamic range in recordings over the past 20+  years. Much blame has been assigned to the competition among commercial producers for ever "hotter" sound. Lots of hand wringing about consumer powerlessness, indifference, acquiesence, or even (gasp) preference for the sound.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
    http://turnmeup.org/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Fb3rWNWDA (Great intro by the master, Bob Katz)

There is a ton of material out there.

My post is about the relatively recent development by the European Broadcast Union of recommendations and standards for measuring and controlling the "loudness" of radio and tv broadcasts, based on a scientific and rational approach to achieve loudness normalization.  Adoption and implementation looks very promising, and there is hope this framework could be a vehicle for the same kind of discussion and change for music production in US markets.

    http://tech.ebu.ch/loudness

The EBU Recommendation R 128 is worth a read: http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf

Also see the practical implementation guidelines: http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech/tech3343.pdf.

And a video of one of the authors explaining the concepts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KSRnLhdUuI.

Three loudness metrics are defined:

• Program Loudness: the "long-term integrated" measured loudness of the entire program. The recommended target level is -23 dBFS.
• Loudness Range: the loudness variation/statistical distribution of the entire program.
• Maximum True Peak Level: the maximum value waveform on a continuous sample of the program.  The recommended maximum is -1 dBTP

There is some free or low-cost software for exploring R 128 and looking at your own music collection. I've tried, for example:

    http://r128gain.sourceforge.net/ (Windows scanner/tagger)
    http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-ebuloudness/ (DAW VST plugin)

I have a possibly irrational hope that a standards-based approach such as this could start to make inroads in the US. Thoughts and ideas?

[Soundtrackmixer]

The problem with this whole loudness deal, is it did not originate with the Engineer - it originated from the marketing folks. The marketing folks are not going to yield their ability to control the message(and its loudness) to any technical folks - and believe you me we have tried to tell them what a bad idea mastering hot was.

If they allowed us to create a CD mix, and a separate radio mix, then the state of CD would not be in the ruins that it currently in. It was partially the price, the quality of the material, and the horrible sound of the CD that has killed sales over time.

Personally, I think this is too little too late. There is basically nothing that will revive the sales of CD's in the Itunes era. Folks want the convenience, forget the sound quality.

[oldmp3]

Agree the engineers often take their orders from producers and marketers.

But sometimes the marketing folks do have to yield - a recent example is the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudness_Mitigation_Act).

This law requires the FCC to implement rules to regulate television commercial loudness according to ATSC Recommended Practice A/85 (http://www.atsc.org/cms/standards/a_85-2011a.pdf). The intent is to curb commercials which are louder than accompanying program material, as the recommendation "requires" that commercial audio loudness vary no more than +/- 2 dB from associated program material.

The CALM act uses the same loudness measurement approach as the EBU Recommendation R 128. The FCC is scheduled to adopt rules by December 15 this year, to become effective by December 15, 2012.

So I think regardless of the media: CD or whatever replaces it, file-based, streaming, radio/tv broadcast, etc. the "loudness" issues will persist until we solve them.

And support for including loudness metadata as part of the "package" adds the ability to tailor for the medium. 

[Soundtrackmixer]

Agree the engineers often take their orders from producers and marketers.

But sometimes the marketing folks do have to yield - a recent example is the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudness_Mitigation_Act).

See the thing is, this is easy to impose on Broadcasters, they are regulated. The music industry is not, so this would be much more difficult to implement within the industry.

This law requires the FCC to implement rules to regulate television commercial loudness according to ATSC Recommended Practice A/85 (http://www.atsc.org/cms/standards/a_85-2011a.pdf). The intent is to curb commercials which are louder than accompanying program material, as the recommendation "requires" that commercial audio loudness vary no more than +/- 2 dB from associated program material.

The CALM act uses the same loudness measurement approach as the EBU Recommendation R 128. The FCC is scheduled to adopt rules by December 15 this year, to become effective by December 15, 2012.

Once again, this is imposed on a regulated industry, and the music industry does not fall into that category.

So I think regardless of the media: CD or whatever replaces it, file-based, streaming, radio/tv broadcast, etc. the "loudness" issues will persist until we solve them.

And support for including loudness metadata as part of the "package" adds the ability to tailor for the medium.

There is no provision in the Red Book standard for the use of meta data on CD, and no need for dynamic controls on Blu-rays. Streaming(via Netflix, and music based Pandora and Spotify) already has the crap compressed out of it, so it looks like broadcast really is the only place that dynamic range controls via metadata can be applied.

I really don't think any of this is going to help music on the physical disc. I feel that part of the industry time has come and gone, and the music industry really blew a chance for a long term format success with CD. High Resolution music has a chance on disc, but it is a up hill battle for sure.