Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500716
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 63 gate") to the full program measurement so that any silent or low-level moments would be excluded from the measurement. This was 1770-2/3, but the dialogue-gated 1770-1 did not change, as it didn't need to. Regarding the different iterations of 1770, A/85 says this: "It is acceptable to employ automated Anchor Element detection algorithms that isolate and measure the loudness of dialogue. Such loudness measurements may directly use formula (2) from BS.1770, and are expected to give similar results to other Anchor Element-based methods employing other formulas in BS.1770." "Formula 2" is actually 1770-1, since the first one was 1770-0. Yeah, I know. But what this means in practical terms is manually isolating the dialogue and measuring it using the 2/3 version of 1770, either on the stem or on the dialogue bus. So, this is where things got confusing, and I'm going to editorialize a little here. At the time, the prevalent measurement software for loudness was Dolby Media Meter, and Dolby decided that two gates (one for dialogue, one for level) didn't need to run at the same time, and since the 1770-1 algorithm still worked the same way for dialogue, the "dash 2" mode on Media Meter did not contain the dialogue measurement. So, the idea was that if you were mixing a show, you'd measure on the "dash 1" setting, and if you were mixing a commercial, you'd measure on "dash 2." In retrospect, this was clearly very confusing for a lot of our industry, because almost everyone started measuring everything on the full program in 1770-2/3 mode, and the entire concept of A/85 was undermined. I do often wonder what would have happened if Dolby had simply left the dialogue gated 1770-1 reading in the interface for the dash 2/3 setting. Media Meter has since been discontinued, and now the only product Dolby makes that measures loudness is the Dolby Atmos Renderer (formerly the Atmos Production/ Mastering Suite), which gives you the integrated full program and integrated dialogue loudness at the same time. Take from that what you will. These days, there are a few programs and plugins in wide use. NUGEN's LM1 seems to be the leader of the pack (for good reason with its timeline-based, always updating histogram), although iZotope's Insight is popular, and Dolby Atmos Renderer