[BC] Re: Could our concept of audio be all wrong?

[Goran Tomas]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 10:49 PM, Robert Orban <rorban at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I've been preaching the quality sermon since the 8000 was introduced, and
> the congregation just goes out to sin again :-) In the U.S., I think that it
> is unlikely that FM audio quality will be regulated in the future, as FCC
> has progressively loosened such rules over the years and shows absolutely no
> sign of wanting to re-regulate that part of broadcasting.
>
> I'm sure that ITU412 was created with good intentions. However, IMO ITU412
> was ill-conceived because the MPX power control occurs after pre-emphasis
> and has no psychoacoustic weighting whatsoever. Therefore, if one transmits
> audio exactly at the power limit, loudness becomes inconsistent, being
> dependent on the spectral and spatial content of the program material. This
> is certainly an unintended consequence that no one who originally worked on
> the standard had anticipated.

Indeed. But what if another standard was proposed, that was better
designed and didn't suffer from the above problems. Just
hypothetically, let's say it required measurement of de-emphasized L+R
audio with Leq RLB2 weighting and some clever timing that would make
the action of compliant limiter smooth and inconspicuous...

I'm just hypothesizing, but perhaps FCC would be more willing to do
something, if there was something they could base their action
(regulation) on.

Going a step further, there are other broadcasters and countries
around the world who would perhaps be much more willing to accept such
a standard. Countries that are traditionally oriented towards quality
(such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc) are already using this
not-so-good-sounding ITU BS 412 regulation. They would probably accept
a better ITU/CCIR standard if there was one, as would probably a lot
of other countries.

Just a thought...

Regards,
Goran Tomas