They do it a little differently in Europe

Old world and all that.  I am of the impression that European broadcast engineers are a more studied lot.  Their process involves much more deliberation, thoughtful analysis, and planning than ours does.  For example, when it comes to station loudness, most programmers and many engineers (myself not included) to do more is better.  It is thus that we get the Omina 11 and other audio squashers.

The EBU technical group takes a different approach:

EBU R128 (ed: Loudness Recommendation) is the result of two years of intense work by the audio experts in the EBU PLOUD Group

Aside from the above-mentioned EBU R128, there are four technical papers dealing with implementation, meters, distribution, and so on.  The body of work is a recommendation, not a requirement.  I can’t imagine the voluntary implementation of something like this in the US.  Even so, there are advantages to having a single acceptable level of programming audio.  It is interesting reading.

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One thought on “They do it a little differently in Europe”

  1. I heard the craziest thing on a recent drive across country. I heard a student run station in upstate New York that was pushing the loudness on an NPR feed. They were compressing the living hell out of the signal, and made the news sound like it was a Hot FM station. I almost called them, but waited until I got home, and saw their website. Very student run.

    NPR sounding like an Adam Curry podcast. Oh, you haven’t lived.

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