Eyeheight Adds Automatic Loudness Controllers

Eyeheight has announced two major new additions to its range of broadcast-quality production and post-production tools.
Scheduled for introduction at IBC 2010 in September, both address the need for tighter control of audio levels during television transmissions, particularly the relative levels of programmes and interstitials. Both conform to the 1TU-R BS.1770 recommendation and its US equivalent, ATSC/85:2009 (Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television).
A hardware solution allowing real-time unattended adaptive loudness and true-peak correction, KARMAudio is based on a geNETics processor and integrates with the full range of geNETics products. It continually monitors the amplitude of incoming audio and makes gradual adjustments to ensure that the overall content complies with a predefined target loudness. These adjustments occur uniformly across all channels to ensure that relative image positions are unaffected. KARMAudio also performs true-peak estimation and correction at 8 x real-time oversampling frequency.
A plug-in for the Apple Mac OS X platform, KARMAudioAU performs offline scaling of the entire programme file to match audio loudness to a target LKFS level. Uniform scaling is applied to match the content with a predefined target loudness without affecting overall audio dynamic range. As a final pass, KARMAudioAU performs an 8 x oversampling true-peak analysis and corrects for true-peak overshoots. KARMAudioAU is accessible to all native OS X processing applications such as Apple's Final Cut video/audio post-production and Soundtrack Pro music creation and audio editing software.
1TU-R BS.1770 and ATSC A/85:2009 were defined in response to growing pressure on broadcasters to prevent the loudness of advertisements and upcoming-programme promotional clips exceeding the apparent average loudness of prior and subsequent content. It forms a central part of the broadcast industry's endeavours to ensure compliance.
(KMcA)