Compression and limiting for new -24lkfs standard?

Question

I found this site while researching audio mixing levels.

I have recently started as the full time engineer mixing advertising content for television in NZ, Australia and US.

My question is related to LKFS

Our guidelines state that we must mix to the -24 LKFS standard with a true peak max of no greater than -9dbfs .

I was listening to some of our companies previous content and found it to be quieter than other content and wonder if there are some methods of getting the nest out of the level guidelines I have been given.

My understanding of the -24LKFS standard was that I could avoid too much hard limiting and compression and aim for the best sounding mix inside the guidelines.

Any tips to get the nest cut through using the new standards?

Any help much appreciated

Thanks

Dan

Answer 1

One of the most important thing with all the new loudness recommendations is fader/volume automation. Also while mixing, have a very light Master Buss Compressor on right from the Start!

Then I go like this:

1. Compress your dialogue if needed. If the dialogue is too Dynamic, its hard to Level anything correctly. I would use 3-9 dB on normal dialogue and 6-12 dB on voiceovers.

2. Remove all the mud you dont Need with highpassing and de noiser (waves wns etc). Remove streaming guitar sounds etc with notches at 2-4 kHz. That Way You understand the dialogue better and you can have a higher music Level.

3. Set the Level of the Key Elements speech, important Music and important fx via the loudness Meter!! That Way You are in the right direction right from the start! Then Set the Master bis Compressor to Ride the peaks ( max 1 dB )

4. Set the Level of the other Elements like background Music, fx and room tone. Set the Levels while Lokping at the loudness Meter and make sure they have only Minor impact on the loudness (momentary).

5. use fader automation to ride the dialogue and Automate the volume of everything so that the Key Elements ist right. Its better to reduce the volume of backround Stuff rather than increasing the volume of Key Elements! I use waves vocal Rider to automatically Ride dialogue, sidechained to all backround elements with 1-2 dB max gain.

6. meassure your project, correct loudness via a gain on the Master. If you have too much Dynamic range -> use a Second Master Compressor with 1.2 - 1.5 threshhold soft attack and release and a very steep threshhold. Then correct your loudness via the Make-up gain. After that meassure the TP and use Bruckwall limiting to ensure -9dBTP.

I use a master buss compression because i always needed a compressor to reduce the Dynamics a bit for German loudness value. And applying the compression at the end sometimes. Screwed my balance.

I hope this helped.

Gl

Answer 2

The -24 LKFS standard in theory lets you limit and compress less but chances are you will find yourself having to compress and limit a decent amount still if your true peak has to be at -9. That seems a little low for the peak but we are at a little bit of a strange time where the stations, distributors and other folks in the chain aren't always set up for the higher peaks that are generally allowed by the LKFS standard.

The content you were listening to, was it recent? or older?

The first thing you should do is measure the room and find out what the best listening level is for the room size eg: 78db, 83db etc. If you set your rooms monitoring to the correct level and leave your volume knob there and make a good sounding mix, it should come out very close to -24.