AES Warsaw 2015
Workshop W7
Friday, May 8, 12:30 — 14:00 (Room: Balowa)
W7 - Loudness Wars: Give Peaks a Chance
Chair:Thomas Lund, TC Electronic A/S - Risskov, Denmark
Panelists:
Florian Camerer, ORF - Austrian TV - Vienna, Austria; EBU - European Broadcasting Union
George Massenburg, Schulich School of Music, McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Abstract:
Music production, distribution, and consumption has been caught in a vicious spiral rendering two decades of our music heritage irreversibly damaged. Today, new tracks and remastered ones typically sound worse than what could even be expected from compact cassette. As a professional society, do we just sit by and let that happen on our watch?
Florian and Thomas are at the helm of two European initiatives to reverse this spiral: EBU R 128 and EU legislation to prevent early hearing loss from listening to personal music players. That combination will soon make even the most ignorant A&R manager realize that it's futile to master music louder than –16 LUFS, as more and more platforms as well as Radio are implementing loudness normalization per default.
