What genius can help decipher delivery specs?

[minister]

Originally Posted by djh108

That said, sounds like you've seen similar specs from yesteryear, Minister. Wondering if there's any advice you'd offer mixing to a situation like that...does indeed sound like its an old skool setup with older gear involved...Sounds like the only loudness control they do is hard limiting the ceiling, but nothing to normalize mixes that average too soft..would you approach it the way I described above if you were in my shoes? Or maybe lean it a little on the compressed side? - thanks so much...

Back when the Earth was cooling, we used to use our fingers to mix and put a Brick Wall on the Busses and Master at -10dBFS. Other compression and limiting was to taste. I didn't SLAM it there. Also, I don't think they mean that AMBIENCES should be at -20, as someone suggested; rather, I think they mean that the AVERAGE PEAK level of things should be -20 and above. Dialogue, but I don't think they mean every single instantaneous peak on every Morpheme. Door closes, car sounds, guns, clicks, that kinda stuff should be peaking at at least -20 but not above -10.

It doesn't need to sound overly compressed! I think they'll run a FULL PEAK and Lowest Peak meter on it and that will be the extent of the QC. You have room to make it sound good.

[TVPostSound]

What network is it??

[djh108]

Thanks again, everyone (BTW - I'm subscribed to this thread with instant notification, but haven't received a single email notification. Anyone solved a similar issue on this forum?)



I had a second conversation with the network and, after talking it through pretty thoroughly, I was able to confirm that what its2loud and minister are saying is basically what the spec is getting at. The guy was very professional, helpful and humble... and even open to some feedback about refining their language a bit.



But for anyone that might find themselves staring at that very spec sheet:

• -20 refers to average PEAKS for full mix,
• -12 refers to average PEAKS for full mix (I think they singled out dialogue in their description just because that is what a full mix is largely comprised of),
• and their ceiling of -8 corresponds to that more conventional spec of -10 as a hard ceiling.

So, while I suspect my use of compression might be a touch more liberal than a lot of post guys given my music production history (I can't resist tickling compressors and adding some subtle, smooth harmonic distortion to things - my impression is a lot of post guys lean more toward riding faders and avoiding compression whenever possible, is that fair to say?), I'm relieved to know I don't have to slam anything. I'm just mixing with my ears to about -23, -24 LUFS with a dynamic range that doesn't seem be exceeding about 7 or 8 LU's on my WLM meter, which is keeping everything easily within their PEAK specs. And if I can turn it all up a couple dbs when its all said and done - while staying in their specs and without changing the mix, I might do that.

Originally Posted by TVPostSound

What network is it??

As unlikely as it would be, I'm overly cautious about publicly publishing anything that could be misconstrued as negativity toward a client, particularly anything that could show up in a search engine (like a network name). But you could probably figure it out if you wanted to know. Client is a conglomerate of a few cable channels that broadcast content centered around outdoor sporting activities.

[Mike Thornton]

As others have said this is an old-school peak normalisation spec. As such I would recommend using the tools what we used then.

I recommend that you buy the zplane PPMulator meter plug-in Use the BBC mode and adjust the reference from the usual -18dBFS for PPM 4 to -16dBFS in the preferences.

As there are 4dBs between each white line, on a BBC PPM this means, for example, that PPM 4 to PPM5 is 4dB and so on. This will mean that with this spec your -8dB ceiling with the change in the reference point would equate to PPM 6, so nothing should go above that. Your normal audio should be around PPM5 and no audio should go below PPM3.

Then use a limiter on the output set to be a brick wall at -8dBFS and make sure you don't hit it too hard, ideally no more than 6dB of gain reduction.

Suitable limiters are the Avid Maxim, Avid Pro Limiter, Nugen Audio ISL2, Waves L2 and Sonnox Oxford Limiter.

You will probably need to use compression on the dialog to help provide a consistent level to get the dialog around PPM5.

Hope that helps,

Mike