The Technology and Production Center Switzerland (tpc) changed its HD playout centre in Zurich to loudness metering according to EBU R128 at the beginning of this year. tpc is relying on a networked installation of ten PGAMM audio multi-meters from the Hamburg-based audio-software development company Pinguin. The first Pinguin loudness measurement in the workflow is carried out during ingest into tpc’s video server. Six ingest streams, each with 16 audio tracks, are measured in parallel (stereo German, 5.1 German, stereo foreign language, 5.1 foreign language). Digitisation is carried out without adjusting audio levels. Instead, the measured loudness values are forwarded via the network to the playout automation system, where they are stored as metadata. When a file is broadcast, its metadata controls the audio levelers placed prior to the on-air mixer. The levelers adjust the loudness to comply with EBU R128. Pinguin audiometers are also employed at the output of the tpc HD playout centre both before and after the on-air limiters. The measured values are recorded with the Pinguin Audio Logger and are kept for three months. These long-term measurements are evaluated daily and enable production and purchased content to be optimised. “With this installation, we changed our ingest process and the on-air operations to loudness metering. Thanks to the networking and integration of the Pinguin audio meters the new workflow is largely automated, avoiding extra work for our engineers”, commented Alfio Di Fazio, project leader at tpc Audio Technology in Zurich. www.masterpinguin.de
