TWiRT 11 - RadioDNS
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:46PM Kirk Harnack - Executive Director, Int'l Business Development, Telos-Omnia-Axia
Tom Ray - VP, Engineering, Buckley Broadcasting, WOR, New York
Chris Tobin - CBS Radio, New York
Chris Tarr - Entercom, Milwaukee, GeekJedi, and Broadcast Engineering Info
This week's guest is Skip Pizzi. Skip is a consultant to corporate, legal, government and broadcast industry clients on the subjects of new media and digital transition.
We discuss ...
the forthcoming Google Nexus One phone, which seems to include an FM radio receiver.
Congress begins action on controlling TV commercial loudness.
and the Sensia digital audio receiver with extended program information.
Skip discusses an Electronic Program Guide for radio and supporting/related technologies. Much of what is discussed is available at RadioDNS.
Download here...
Reader Comments (2)
Kirk
I hope you expand the TV loudness discussion and have guests from your company Linear acoustic along with TC and possibly Dolby.
There are various reasons for TV loudness problems not all of which has been discussed. As was stated, Cable headends are indeed an issue but the other problems lie mostly with some local stations and not with their source (networks). In some cases networks have set up systems where the local station is an insert into their high def stream. This means that some stations may well be using their old analog plant with the network interface upconverting. In such cases while the network programming and commercials will have good loudness control, the station insertion could be almost any level.
The major networks are very serious about delivering good audio especially since there is a lot of 5.1 being broadcast now.. Both software spiders and hardware loudness controllers are used to tastefully manage loudness. There is indeed and standardized system to measure perceived loudness which is BS 1776. All the major manufacturers of loudness controllers have measuring devices both in hardware and various kinds of software. There is a free meter available from Orban which can measure loudness according to BS 1776 as well as an enhanced version of the old CBS loudness meter which is what Bob prefers.
Any legislation dealing with loudness will likely be based on the practices already in use by networks and some stations. While different networks have different reference levels they are within about 3 db of each other. As you discussed the bigger problem will be in policing cable.
Robert,
Excellent comments. Thanks for the information and encouragement. Perhaps you could be on a show when we have Tim Carroll on?
Kirk