New 2014 loudness standards in LKSF/LUFS - do you comply?

[Kolstad]

Seems new loudness standards has been determined by US law, in December 2013, aka The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act.

Bobby Owsinski writes "all networks and broadcasters are now especially concerned about the level of any program or commercial supplied, and have a zero tolerance policy for volume that strays outside of the spec"

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/in_t ... _standard/

Seems all broadcasters now has to meet the LKSF scale (US terms), LUFS (Europe).
"the measurement must be made around an “anchor element,” which for television means dialog. That means that the dialog must always be around the -24LFS level, while music and effects can momentarily peak above, maybe as high as -16LKFS for brief periods."

As I understand it, we can still mix as loud as we want, but the music will be dialed down to meet these new standards. Which basically means there is no incentive to push it anymore, at least not in concern for influencing the end user.

But are "the loudness wars" really over? I still wonder if RMS need to be pushed for pitching purposes, if a&r isn't as aware of the fallacies of percieved loudness.. any thoughts on this?

Great video here by Ian Shepard to explain the nuts and bolts of the new standards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31zHqzjRn4c

[andygabrys]

the standard deals with a time weighted average. So on an average TV show where music plays as underscore and perhaps feature for brief periods, Its contribution to the time weighted average will not be that great because whens its pulled down under dialogue, it doesn't matter as much if its been limited to -10db RMS or -4 dB RMS as the editor / mixer is still going to pull it down to the point where it doesn't compete with the dialogue and the resulting time weighted average.

People will likely keep pushing the volume in certain genres while trying to get placements with new publishers and libraries. After contact is made clients often have different specs (like no master effect applied at all).

In most cases I expect it will have negligible effect on suppliers of music (libraries and publishers) as compliance to the standard is really only going to be in the hands of the actual production company doing the mix of the final programme.

Opinion naturally - but I think it will be a while before any standards are handed down to composers not directly composing to picture, and especially to any composer who is not in charge of final dialogue / music / FX mixing.