LCn English Manual

Appendix: Level versus loudness
LCn Manual 33
Postscript
Control of loudness is the only audio issue that
has made It to the political agenda. Political reg-
ulation is currently being put into effect in Europe
to prevent hearing damage and disturbances
from PA systems, and to avoid annoying level
jumps during commercial breaks in television. In
Australia, something similar may happen.
Many years of research into loudness of not only
dialog, but also of loudness relating to any type
of audio programming, has brought TC to the
forefront of companies in the world to perform
real-time loudness measurement and control.
Therefore, TC has taken active part in loud-
ness standardization efforts in Japan, the United
States, Europe and other areas.
In broadcast, digitization is driving the number
of AV channels and platforms up, while the total
number of viewers remains roughly the same. On
the sound production side, it is therefore impor-
tant that delivery criteria can be easily specified
and met, even by people not primarily concerned
with audio: Journalists, musicians, video editors,
marketing professionals etc.
Using only dialog-based audio measurements
in digital broadcast has led to ambiguous level
management, more level jumps between pro-
grams, and extra time spent on audio production
and management in general. Non-dialog based
level jumps are currently creating havoc in digital
TV, and LCn helps correct that situation.
LCn can be used to control level and improve
sound – not only in Dolby AC3-based transmis-
sions, but also on other broadcast platforms,
such as analog TV, mobile TV and IPTV.
To summarize:
LCn is part of a holistic and universal approach
to loudness control, starting at the production
or live engineer. When she realizes the dynamic
range at her disposal, less processing is needed
at later stages of a distribution chain. The chain
ends with the capability of quality controlling ev-
erything upstream by applying the same loud-
ness measure for logging purposes: A closed
loop.
Welcome to a new, standardized world of au-
dio leveling – across genres, across formats,
across the globe.