Dave Moulton

This process will have the effect of making your mixes clearer, more transparent, a little louder for a given maximum level and generally a little "nicer.

Not all crumminess sounds the same.

There are issues of dynamic range, maximum and minimum levels, subjective loudness qualities, spectrum and much more.

You need good speakers, placed well in a good room.

Stable, consistent and predictable bass is one of the hardest things to obtain in a monitoring situation.

As we've discussed, low frequencies don't do well coming out of small loudspeakers into smallish rooms.

Compressors go back and forth between the realm where the level change can occur to each individual sound and the realm where we are changing the overall level for a while.

Our perception of loudness varies as a function of amplitude, frequency, frequency bandwidth and time. It is a complex sensation.

One major determinant of timbre is the distribution of energy across the audio spectrum.

Last month, I hinted at some of the things we can do to make our use of loudspeakers for audio monitoring more effective.

Last month, I reviewed the Modulation Sciences SpiderVision Surround Sound signal level meter. As the lead-in to that review, I noted Lord Kelvin’s dictum that to measure is to know.

My measurements sought to examine the question of variance of audio levels between channels and how this variance has changed (or not) over time.

You may recall that we’ve been grappling with the measurement of audio loudness and the implications of the ITU’s B.S. 1770-1 standard for the measurement of loudness, in support of the CALM Act.

“I’m a TV engineer from the old school, so of course I never read articles about audio. The CALM Act changes that, of course.”

Dave Moulton takes another look at TV audio levels in advance of the CALM Act next month.

This month I’d like to spend a little more time discussing the center channel, concentrating on some of the production issues we have to deal with.

It seems appropriate to me that we go a little further with the discussion, simply to clarify what seems to be meant and desired in practice by A/85 and its authors.

This will actually take a couple of columns. I'll start with the idea of standing waves.

You need a room—pretty much all to yourself and big enough so others can join you on occasion.

I recently attended the Audio Engineering Society's Technical Conference on Multichannel Audio, held in late June in Banff, Canada.

What a year! It's been 12 months now since the terrorist attacks on our country. What's happened? Where are we?