Loudness Recommendation EBU R128

What do you think of this new loudness measuring standard EBU is trying to push through? It's called EBU R128 and it was conceived to put an end to the horrible loudness wars that have been battled over for so long already.. So many casualties to so many useless eXtreme Mastering plugz.

Anyway, it all sounds pretty positive but I tried mixing some stuff with it, and it's very soft in comparison to what I'm used to. I wouldn't mind seeing this pushed through, but right now I wouldn't want to buy an album mastered like this. Would you use it? Have you used it?

I got this one plugin from ToneBoosters and it's a free demo (their plugin demos have parameter saving turned off - which that particular plugin doesn't have, so yeah it's basically a freebie).

i think it's a bunch of acronyms and numbers, what's the point here ?

They want to push through a change from peak normalisation to loadness normalisation, sort of like in ReplayGain.

here you can read this: http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_2010-Q3_loudness_Camerer.pdf

there you fuckin' have it, folks

No no examples, as I am also too lazy to post any, but it is a lot softer then what I'm used to, I can tell you that.

ye basically the whole paper is a big amen to push this thing through, one big sales pitch. but on the other hand, it's a nice idea to not have to worry about how loud your tunes are compared to other tracks - if this shit gets pushed through it's all about the quality of the music.

i take this recommendation very seriously, thank you for bringing it across my desk. i will have linda send out a memo in triplicate~

*canned laughter

  On 4/14/2011 at 2:31 AM, a missing sense said:

*canned laughter @-23LUFS

fix'd

I have no fucking clue what any of this means

  On 4/14/2011 at 2:39 AM, hahathhat said:

  On 4/14/2011 at 2:31 AM, a missing sense said:

*canned laughter @-23LUFS

 

fix'd

lol fuck no I would brickwall that shit

I'm inebriated as shit but I got the picture from the get go. Wake up nerd noobs

I can definitely see how new mastering level standard is beneficial but how smooth of a transition could this be from the current brickwall limiting norm. How could new music on mp3s, youtube, flash drives everywhere swiftly shift to suddenly becoming <> 11 DB less abrasively loud? I see the purpose and I can imagine the application but I don't see how this is realistic in big picture.

Definitely will read up on this.

  On 4/14/2011 at 2:20 AM, a missing sense said:

if this shit gets pushed through it's all about the quality of the music.

and that's what dooms it

hah Sounds like a great idea. Now convince all the shitbags in pop music to do it...

ELECTRIC CARS ARE SO MUCH BETTER; WE SHOULD COMPLETELY STOP USING THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE TOMORROW.

  On 4/14/2011 at 8:40 AM, hahathhat said:

ELECTRIC CARS ARE SO MUCH BETTER; WE SHOULD COMPLETELY STOP USING THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE TOMORROW.

There's definetly practical application for this. Because it's not about the perceived loudness anymore, everything you hear on tv or radio would be at a balanced level. It's like after years of writing in bigger and bigger and more bold fonts, cramming more and more pixels in a fixed digital height, you all of a sudden have a huge space between the lines which you can't cram like you're used to if you are using the meters. You can finally use the thin and lower case fonts again, and capitalized shit will sound Capitalized.

Dunno how this would work with loud as fuck music though hehe. There's this tool with which you can measure the LUFS over a couple of files or over a whole album and it tells you how much you need to shift it down (it's always down), probably gonna try it out on some albums see what happens. If you're familiar with ReplayGain - it's exactly that, only more refined and aplicaple for creating.

And this doesn't mean everything will sound beautiful and dynamic all of a sudden, if people want to use the headroom it's there, the practical side that might win radio and tv stations over is more a thing of: people don't have to fiddle with the volume control anymore because everything sounds level (they'd probably bump the commercials a bit, etc etc)