TC Electronic DB4 MKII - Manual (Page 86)

LM6
82 DB4 / DB8 MKII Algorithms
tion with long-term descriptors from production
onwards, is a transparent and well sounding
alternative to our current peak level obsession.
Not only for music, but also in production for
broadcast or film. The engineer, who may not be
an audio expert, should be able to identify and
consciously work with loudness developments
within the limits of a target distribution platform,
and with predictable results when the program is
transcoded to another platform.
LM6 therefore color codes loudness so it’s easy
to identify target level (green), below the noise
floor level (blue), or loud events (yellow), see Fig
2.
Fig 2
Color coding and target loudness for selected
broadcast platforms based on a consumer’s
Dynamic Range Tolerance, DRT. The aim is to
center dynamic range restriction around av-
erage loudness, in this case the –20 dB line,
thereby automatically avoiding to wash out dif-
ferences between foreground and background
elements of a mix.
Note how different the broadcast requirements
are from those of Cinema.
When production engineers realize the bound-
aries they should generally stay within, less dy-
namics processing is automatically needed dur-
ing distribution, and the requirement for main-
taining time-consuming metadata at a broadcast
station is minimized.
In broadcast, the goal is to use the same loud-
ness measure for
– Production,
– Ingest,
– Linking
– Master Control Processing
– Logging
…thereby ensuring better audio quality not only
in DTV audio, but across all broadcast plat-
forms. LM6 and TC processing can coexist with
PPM meters, VU meters or Dolby’s LM100 me-
ter. LM6 greatly increases the usability of LM100
in production environments because it provides
running status, and gives a standardized and in-
tuitive indication of both dialog and non-dialog
program.
Basic Use
LM6 makes use of a unique way of visualizing
short-term loudness, loudness history, and long-
term statistical descriptors. It may be used with
mono, stereo and 5.1 material for any type of
program material.
Press the Radar key to bring up the Radar page.
This page will be used most of the time. The ba-
sic functionality of the Radar page is shown in
Fig 3.
Fig 3 – LM6 Radar page in DB4 and DB8.
Target Loudness is displayed at 12 o’clock of
the outer ring, and at the bold circle of the ra-
dar indicated also by the transition from green
to yellow. The descriptors Loudness Range and
Program Loudness, are the yellow numbers in
the lower part of the display. Press the Reset
key to reset Radar and Descriptors.
The “Transport Controls”, Pause and Reset, are
used to make the radar and descriptor measure-
ments run, pause and reset. Press the “Main”
key to change preset name and for adjust-
ing more parameters. Press the “Setup” key to
change setup parameters. Presets can be stored
specifying target loudness, noise floor, overload