MOTUnation.com

I work in DP every day but I don't have to deal with the loudness issue in my daily work, but my band has quit playing live and has become strictly a writing/recording project. We plan to release an album a year, give or take. I'm not looking for perfection but would like to be within modern specs as far as loudness for our releases.

I've tried to study up on the whole loudness issue. It gets very technical very quickly but I do understand the underlying principles. I'd like some easy to use metering plug or system that doesn't require a 200 page manual to understand and use. Is anything like that available for say, under $200? I really don't need 14 different screens of spectrographs I probably wouldn't understand, just something simple and straightforward. Any recommendations?

Related question: I see where the different music outlets have different loudness standards. Our last CD (which the mastering engineer completely butchered–another story) we had duplicated at Discmakers and for a reasonable fee they distributed the CD to the major music outlets–very easy and convenient and worth the money IMO. As far as Discmakers, I'm not sure what they are actually sending to these outlets or if the media outlets themselves are down-converting from WAV or whatever. So I'm curious how people are handling this. Should you master for all these individual outlets separately or is there an album (CD) standard that can translate reasonably well to all these outlets and their final resolution and loudness standards?

TIA,
Phil

I just did some work on this very topic. If you haven't already, you might want to read up on the K-scale… here's a good article from the AES: http://www.aes.org/technical/documentDo ... m?docID=65
There are other, less technical articles on Bob Katz and the K-scale… just hit Google and you'll get a bunch.

For metering, I like bx_meter, which can be set to any K-scale and more. It's available from Plugin Alliance for $99 and often goes on sale for much less. https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/prod ... meter.html
There are plenty of others, including some freebies, but this is the one I have the most and best experience with.
PSP Triple Meter is also useful for an analog (VU, RMS) reference (and occasionally goes on sale, as well): http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/too ... iplemeter/


Finally, I found the following article from Sound on Sound to be very helpful in calibrating my studio: http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/monitor-wizard

Good luck!

Rick Cornish wrote:I just did some work on this very topic. If you haven't already, you might want to read up on the K-scale… here's a good article from the AES: http://www.aes.org/technical/documentDo ... m?docID=65
There are other, less technical articles on Bob Katz and the K-scale… just hit Google and you'll get a bunch.

For metering, I like bx_meter, which can be set to any K-scale and more. It's available from Plugin Alliance for $99 and often goes on sale for much less. https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/prod ... meter.html
There are plenty of others, including some freebies, but this is the one I have the most and best experience with.
PSP Triple Meter is also useful for an analog (VU, RMS) reference (and occasionally goes on sale, as well): http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/too ... iplemeter/


Finally, I found the following article from Sound on Sound to be very helpful in calibrating my studio: http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/monitor-wizard

Good luck!

Thanks Rick! I'll read those articles. I didn't think the specific meters you're referencing were really loudness meters, per the new standards. I'm looking at Waves WLM for example, and to any Waves haters, yes, I'm OK with Waves and use their plugs quite a bit.

I like Melda's MLoudnessAnalyzer. I can't remember if it's part of their free bundle or not, but Melda's prices are very reasonable with free upgrades.

Phil

Phil O wrote:I like Melda's MLoudnessAnalyzer I can't remember if it's part of their free bundle or not, but Melda's prices are very reasonable with free upgrades.

Phil

That's one that came up in searches and I was looking at and seems to be more what I'm looking for than the more standard and plentiful RMS/PPM meters. It comes in a package with a boatload of other stuff for $50. Actually it's free with limitations and nag screens. I can do the $50. I almost pulled the tigger on that yesterday...

There's a summary of different standards here:

http://www.tcelectronic.com/loudness/br ... standards/

Phil O wrote:I like Melda's MLoudnessAnalyzer. I can't remember if it's part of their free bundle or not, but Melda's prices are very reasonable with free upgrades.

Phil

+10000
I LOVE Melda´s stuff!

Phibrown, check each week with them. They have a randomly-chosen forever 50% discount on their plug-ins. A few days ago I snatched their amazing MAutodynamicEQ for a few bucks

That loudness analyser will eventually end up there.

Following.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Free, and excellent: http://www.tb-software.com/TBProAudio/dpmeter2.html

Thanks for all the replies. Some of these articles are over my head, though and most seems to be oriented toward broadcast and not music CD's etc.

Robert Randolph wrote:Free, and excellent: http://www.tb-software.com/TBProAudio/dpmeter2.html

Sweet! I'm out of town today but I'll check it out this weekend. Never heard of that company but can't beat the price. I may buy the Melda pkg too.