In Broadcast - April 2013 - 74

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 18 - APRIL 2013

N E W S

InSOUND

The Orban Meter And Its Algorithms
within a floating window that
extends from the loudest sounds
By Peter Lee
within the preset integration period
to sounds that are 10 dB quieter
Vice President of European
than the loudest sounds.
Operations / Director of Sales
Experimental CBS – The V1
Orban meter offered an experimental
long-term
oudness is subjective: it is the
l o u d n e s s
intensity of sound as perceived
indication (ﬁrst
by the ear/brain system. No
developed in
simple meter, whether peak
2008) by postprogramme meter (PPM) or VU,
processing the
provides a reading that correlates
CBS algorithm’s
well to perceived loudness. A
output. This is
meter that purports to measure
unchanged in
loudness must agree with a
the V2 meter.
panel of human listeners. The
Displayed by
Orban Loudness Meter receives
a single cyan
a two-channel stereo signal from
bar on the CBS
any Windows sound device and
loudness meter,
measures its loudness and level.
this uses a
It can simultaneously display
relatively simple
instantaneous peaks, VU, PPM,
algorithm and
CBS Technology Center loudness,
we welcome
Orban’s Loudness Meter post-processes the CBS
algorithm’s output
and ITU BS.1770 loudness. The
any feedback
m e te r i n c l u d e s p e a k- h o l d
Recommendation ITU-R BS.1770:
on its perceived usefulness. This
functionality that makes the peak “Algorithms to measure audio
algorithm attempts to mimic a
indications of the meters easy to
programme loudness and trueskilled operator’s mental integration
see.
peak audio level.” In 2011, this was
of the peak swings of a meter with
Jones & Torick Meter – The CBS
updated to BS.1770-2, which adds “VU-like” dynamics. This algorithm
meter is a ‘short-term’ loudness
gating so that the meter ignores
shares certain characteristics
meter that displays the details of
silence and is weighted toward
with the ﬂoating gate introduced
moment-to-moment loudness with
louder programme material, which
in EBU R 128.
dynamics similar to a VU meter.
contributes most to a listener’s
The CBS & BS – The BS.1770-2
BS.1770 Loudness Meter –
perception of loudness. BS.1770- “Momentary” meter, which uses a
In 2006, the ITU-R published
2 indicates only sounds that fall
400ms integration time with equal

L

74

time weighting throughout the
interval, is closest in spirit to the
CBS meter, as both were designed
for use by operators for real-time
production loudness monitoring.
The ‘Momentary’ meter does not
directly model the multiple loudness
integration time constants of human
hearing, all of which are faster
than 400ms. In addition, because
it is a simple integrated power
measurement, it does not model
‘loudness summation’ (which was
described in the section above on
the CBS meter).
Orban has recently released 2.0
which is a major upgrade that adds
extensive new features. The software
accepts two-channel stereo inputs
and displays instantaneous peaks,
VU, PPM, CBS Technology Center
loudness, ITU BS.1770-2, EBU R
128 loudness, and Reconstructed
8x Over-Sampled Peaks.
All meters include peak-hold
functionality that makes the peak
indications of the meters easy to
see. The VU and PPM meters are
split to indicate the left and right
channels. The PPM and VU meters
also displays the instantaneous
peak values of the L and R
digital samples.
Logging to text ﬁles for importing
into spreadsheet or graphing
software is also supported.

Yamaha’s Flagship Nuage Console
A

n established name in the
broadcast industry, Yamaha
digital mixing consoles and
monitors are the equipment of
choice for many studios. However,
the company’s proﬁle has been
signiﬁcantly raised by the recent
introduction of the Dugan-MY16
auto microphone mixing card, the
CL series of digital consoles and
now the flagship Nuage postproduction system.
The Dugan-MY16 has already
made a substantial impression
on BBC One’s Question Time,
the UK’s ﬂagship political debate
programme, making the work of
mix engineers Graham Backhouse
and Jeremy Farnell less fraught and
the conversation between panellists
more natural. “The Dugan-MY16
increases the intelligibility of the
panel and reduces overall colouration
of the broadcast sound, which
also keeps the broadcast sound
supervisor happy,” says Jeremy.
Another high proﬁle production
to beneﬁt from the Dugan-MY16
is 3nach9 (3 After 9), Germany’s
longest-running television talk show,

whose facilities have recently been
upgraded by the installation of a CL5
digital console and two Rio3224-D
I/O units alongside the Dugan-MY16.
“3nach9 has a complex setup
because, as well as the ‘round table’
format of the show’s discussions, it
features house musicians and live
performances by guest bands,” says
Cornelius ‘Conny’ Vogel, owner of
audio specialists Its A Bird, who
supplied the system.
“The programme’s technical
production company, Bremedia
GmbH, chose the CL system for
its quality, ﬂexibility and excellent
sound quality. And with 12 wireless
microphones on each show, the
production team is really pleased
with the Dugan-MY16 card. It
has greatly simplified mixing
the interviews and debates, any
problems with feedback are a thing
of the past!”
The recent launch of Nuage from
Yamaha and Steinberg, has already
attracted a lot of attention from
the broadcast industry. Offering
unprecedented ﬂexibility, it provides
post-production engineers with a

state-of-the-art
system from
two of the audio
industry’s most
highly respected
manufacturers.
The system
seamlessly
m a r r i e s
d e d i c a t e d Yamaha's Nuage ﬂagship audio post-production system
needed for Nuendo editing and
Yamaha control and interface
hardware with Steinberg’s Nuendo
session management in an efﬁcient
6 DAW software. Nuage components
user conﬁguration; Fader control
communicate with each other and up
surfaces, which align with the
to three DAWs via Dante networking.
system’s LCD monitors to provide
A low latency, PCIe Dante audio
smooth visual continuity with the
interface card (for Mac or PC)
Nuendo mixing window; Workspace
units which can be used to integrate
delivers up to 128 simultaneous,
bi-directional channels at 192kHz,
third party hardware and/or facilityor 256 at up to 96kHz. As well as
specific custom options; Three
different I/O units, providing 16
making it very straightforward to
analogue I/O,16 AES/EBU I/O or
create custom configurations to
eight digital and eight analogue;
match any application, the digital
network means that premium audio
And a PCIe Dante Accelerator card
quality is maintained throughout.
which gives the computer running
The system is fully modular, which
Nuendo extra low latency and
means that it can be used for all
multi-channel audio data transfer
post-production applications.
capability, with redundancy.
Components include: Master
First deliveries of Nuage are taking
control unit, featuring everything
place during March/April.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/?first=Phillip&last=Izzard&search=Go https://twitter.com/inbroadcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzEatLsHdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player https://www.facebook.com/InBroadcast http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/inbroadcast/id468652679?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.branded.inbroadcast&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5icmFuZGVkLmluYnJvYWRjYXN0Il0 http://WWW.INBROADCAST.COM http://www.orban.com/meter/ http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/global/en/news_events/newsrelease/2012/50_20121114_nuage.jsp
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