How to set my Loudness Meter....

[thope]

Hi all ,

Sorry to hijack an old thread, but i've got a similar problem.

Just trying to get my head around mixing for the ITU-R BS.1770-2 standard. After finishing the mix on a short animation film i became aware of this standard for "loudness". I've got the waves WLM meter and im trying to re do the mix to be compliant. This is a very frustrating process for Sure!!.

I should mention that this is a small independent production and i been given no delivery specs to conform to. This is purely for my own education.

Some parts of the mix are reading high and some parts are reading low. I've gone back and remixed things a little to try and conform but i feel i've lost a lot in how the mix feels. The parts that read a bit loud... where meant to be loud! and same goes for the parts that read low. In order to make the mix conform i feel i'll loose a lot of creative freedom in mixing! Is there something i'm missing?

Also, are you supposed to hit -23 on the short term scale or the long term scale.. or both.

T

[nucelar]

Hi thope,
Sorry to tell you, but you got it wrong
It's much more simple than that. You must hit the -23 LUFS in the LONG term. (AKA integrated loudness). Basically take your great final mix, measure it with the plug-in in one pass and note the resulting long term LUFS.
If it's higher or lower than -23, just apply a global gain offset to compensate.
For example if you hit -25.4 LUFS, you apply a audiosuite gain of +2.4 to the whole mix. (in this case careful not to go over full scale on loud passages)


The loudness specs were conceived to free you from compressing your dynamic range by measuring a programme as a whole. Use dynamic range as you see fit for the medium/audience you're mixing for.
The instantaneous and short term values in the plug-in are just an indication of how loud it is at any given point, and they help you to get to the ballpark during the mixing.
Cheers

[thope]

Thanks so much for clearing this up.
What about the momentary scale? When parts of the mix exceed -18 LUFS the value turns red as if it's registered as 'over'. Is this something i need to fix? There are no points that exceed -1dBTP. What does the unders and overs section tell me? Is this just a guide to let me know parts of the mix that are influencing the final long term LUFS value? So if i end up with a bunch of overs and unders, but a long term LUFS value of -23LUFS the mix is still compliant?

Thanks again for your help

[nucelar]

Depends on the client/type of work.
Some clients may be more conservative or concerned about too much dynamic range and require you're audio to live between a max and min LUFS, but personally i never been asked this in the context of loudness spec.
For commercials, it is more probable that you get asked this kind of things.
I assume that the WLM lets you define the "under" and "over" thresholds or even turn them off