Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/987065
72 S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Karol Urban CAS MPSE (Station 19, Grey's Anatomy, New Girl): "I try everything I can to retain my dynamic range because it's emotionally more evocative. But if I have a really tight spec, like one that requires short-term LKFS minimums and maximums and requires a +/- 2 reading per act, those can't be as dynamic as might be most effective. It's almost becoming the same thing that happened to pop music mastering, where there is just no dynamic range in anything. "People sometimes look at our job as a technical job, which I don't think is fair: you have to be technical, but our job is a creative one; we facilitate the narrative through sound. But overly tight specs often disarm us of many of our creative tools, and it doesn't serve anyone. It doesn't serve the filmmakers, it doesn't serve the producers, it doesn't serve the content and it doesn't serve the providers. Additionally with strict act by act level requirements, loudness short-term max and minimums and various length act running times, at the end of the mix day when we're done and everyone is happy with the mix, we have to go back through the acts, run the meters and then maybe lower or raise the over level of an act in order to hit spec and address creative notes." The problem we are all faced with is that the intention of this spec is to normalize and create consistency, but often the implementations of it are doing the exact opposite. Keith Rogers CAS (Westworld, The Exorcist, Altered Carbon): "One of the first things I do when I start a new series is to look at the specs of that particular network or streaming service because they all interpret the CALM Act a little differently. How the specification is interpreted will change the way I approach the show. If the network or provider is measuring at 1770–3 Infinite All, and I have a quiet show that is primarily dialogue, then I will mix the dialogue upfront and loud in order to hit that -24 LKFS spec. If the show contains a lot of action and loud sections, then I have no choice but to mix the dialogue lower, say -27 LKFS, -30 LKFS, so that the overall program does not exceed the -24 LKFS Infinite All spec. "I'd like to add that this problem is exacerbated when a network or provider measures their LKFS act by act. Now, rather than making these adjustments on an episode-to- episode basis, we now have to make these adjustments on an act-by-act basis. If we have a quiet act, we need to mix the dialogue louder then we would on a very loud or busy act." We asked Rick Hart, layback engineer at BluWave Audio, if he ever has to make adjustments to printmasters that he's laying back, and what his take is on hearing mixes that are delivered to these various interpretations of the spec are. Rick Hart: "Some shows do come to layback out of spec and I do have to make adjustments, but I'm really just playing a numbers game and I'm mostly making adjustments that nobody is going to hear for the sake of hitting that number. With shows that I measure at my layback that are delivered to 1770-3, if I focus my ears to the dialogue, I find that it's moving all over the place. I read the specs that come to me from all the different networks and what I find generally is that they are all missing really important information. Let's face it, when we sit down to mix the show, we want to hear dialogue at a certain level, so if the dialogue is forced one way or the other, we're going to have to change the monitor level in order to have the dialogue sit at that level. When I watch NBC and CBS on air, being the two networks that actually measure dialogue LKFS, their shows sound closer to the source as I remember it in my room, as I laid them back. People listen to dialogue; they don't listen to background, they don't listen to Foley, they don't listen to gunshots, that's all part of what they're hearing, but what they're listening to is the dialogue. So that always has to be your perceived anchor. If you move from that anchor, you've moved away from the whole concept of having a unified level across your broadcast program material, and across your commercial program material, and from station to station." As television develops into the 21st century, it has gotten bigger. Bigger in scope, bigger in vision, and bigger in execution. Premium episodic, as Scott Norcross so accurately puts it, is becoming king. This is nowhere more evident than streaming content—iTunes, Amazon Prime, HBO Now, and Netflix are quickly becoming the dominant players in the market. Each episode is a short movie, and requires the sonic content to support this vision. Scott Norcross, Dolby Labs: "I will say there's still some misunderstanding about loudness and what A/85 states. As an example, I have a show with some dynamics and the dialogue is at -24, but then the relative level gate (full program mix loudness) might be 6 dB louder, so -18. So to align the full program mix loudness, I would actually have to drop the whole thing by 6 dB, which would mean that your dialogue is now at -30 LKFS. So if you're broadcasting that content with the dialogue at -30, somebody who's watching is going to say, 'Oh, I can't hear the dialogue' and they're going to turn it up. So when you go into the commercial or another program that's less dynamic and normalized to -24 LKFS, you could get blasted. So, this actually makes it worse. This is the reason we always say, 'use the dialogue as the anchor' to ensure dialogue is aligned program-to- program across all stations for all content. And if that has wide dynamic range content, let the dynamic range control that's built into the set-top box deal with that. So the misconception is that A/85 specifies 1770-3 for everything,