Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/987065
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 71 the first couple of acts being dialogue-driven and without any action sequences, and then progressing the story into the last couple of acts with intense action, the explosions and gunfire in the crescendo of the story will not seem any louder than the spoken dialogue in the first acts, and then the commercials will come barreling in seemingly twice as loud as the action. Additionally, using an Infinite All, full program mix measurement skews the levels between episodes of the same show, so if one were to binge-watch The Long Road Home, they're going to have to adjust the level between episodes. As a sidenote, another development that is bound to affect this issue somewhat is that Dolby is about to cease support for Media Meter, which means the industry will be looking to switch to a new standard tool for these measurements. The frontrunner for a software-based solution appears, at this point, to be Nugen Audio's VisLM 2. When measuring full program with 1770-3, this … is going to feel louder than this. Jim Starzynski: "When the dialogue storyline of the program is recorded at -24 LKFS, the audience will set their volume control to this value for comfortable listening and want to leave it untouched. Music and effects loudness is blended in by the mix engineer (by ear in the ~78SPL room). With dialogue, the focus of the mix and loudness measurement, loud or soft music and effects will not impact the average measured loudness value of the show. Dynamic range for the program is maintained because music and effects are not part of the reported dialogue-based average loudness measurement." Joe DeAngelis CAS (The Punisher, This Is Us, Bosch) on 1770-3: "You're playing a loudness game: 'We have a bunch of loud scenes in the episode, so we're gonna have to mix a bunch of quiet scenes elsewhere in the show to make up for it.' So it's defeating the whole purpose of that 1770-3 spec. The network demands an even measurement but they're actually shooting themselves in the foot. We need to turn the room monitor level up to 82 dB SPL or 85 dB SPL, depending on how loud the show is, in order to hear the dialogue because, to hit spec, the dialogue is now down at -29 LKFS or -30 LKFS. The result is that in order to hit the 1770-3 Infinite All spec our show is now playing quieter than a dialogue driven show, and certainly quieter than the commercials." Indeed, a 1770-3 spec act by act has the effect of either removing dynamic range from a mix or making each act wildly different in apparent dialogue loudness. Andy D'Addario (Transparent, Mozart in the Jungle, The X-Files): "When they're measuring act by act, it's been a real challenge to get a mix that is dynamic. We might have a big opening that goes straight into main title and then from that straight into commercial, so we have three minutes of chaos, and what basically ends up happening is that the teaser act plays low, then the commercial blasts in, which is not what out filmmakers want. It's a real challenge to get the filmmakers' intent to the viewers. I do miss dialogue-as-the-anchor-based mixing (BS.1770-1)—that spec played the best. But what I hear currently is that commercials are louder than ever, and the shows are quieter due in large part to the "act by act" measurement. It's unfortunate. It's making the issue worse in that you're chasing the remote at home and that's exactly what the networks don't want either. It's actually the opposite of the intent of the CALM Act when we are measured this way."