The Challenge Of Dialog Across Modern Platforms

Inconsistent dialog level between programs still pose a challenge to today’s audiences. AudioTools Server has the tools to fix this and more.

For more than ten years, audio specifications, such as EBU R128 and ATSC A/85, have sought to address variations in audio loudness between different content by recommending that all audio is normalized to a consistent level, based on its overall integrated (Program) loudness (-23LUFS and -24LKFS, respectively). 

While these specifications have gone a long way towards taming the so-called “Loudness Wars”, the drawback of using the overall program loudness as the target element is that it doesn’t take into account what is the single most important aspect of the audio to the viewer: the dialog.