Our own Mike Thornton will be chairing a panel and will joined by Martin Black, Rob Ashard, Olly Grant, Ben Shirley and Ian Astbury. This panel is a follow up to the seminar Mike delivered at BVE last year and will explore a number of key questions regarding the loudness workflow.

• Is the R128 effective or will there always be ambiguity surrounding 'perceived loudness'?
• With different loudness standards across the world- are they all compliant with the ITU BS.1770-3?
• Loudness on podcasts and new mediums
• Standardising Commercials and intentional quiet commercials - short term maximum

Martin Black - Senior Sound Consultant, BskyB

Since graduating from the University of Surrey in the late 70s with a Tonmeister honours degree in Music, Martin has worked in live broadcast television sound for over 30 years. He began as a sound operator at ITV’s Thames Television in London before moving to its Outside Broadcast division a few years later, where he became a Sound Supervisor, working on everything from Royal Weddings and General Elections to classical concerts and location dramas. In 1993 he joined the then fledgling satellite broadcaster Sky TV, where he specialised in live Outside Broadcast sound for Sky Sports. During 2004 he conceived much of the audio design for Sky’s first two HD studios with 5.1 surround sound, constructed in 2005 and 2006. At that time he also invented the ‘BLITS’ 5.1 surround channel ident sequence, which was subsequently adopted by the EBU as the recommended 5.1 line-up signal in EBU Tech.3304. 

More recently he was responsible for much of the audio concepts and design of Sky’s H1 Broadcast Complex known as Sky Studios. His current work includes development of Object Based Audio for Sky’s media services, as well as advising the DPP on audio standards, Loudness and metadata. Martin has also co-chaired the FAME Audio Group (‘Forum for Advanced Media in Europe’) since its inception in 2006, and has been a corresponding member of the EBU’s PLOUD group since its formation.

Rob Ashard - TV Sound Supervisor, Graham Norton

Rob started his TV Audio career in 1980 at London Weekend Television, a company known for its light Entertainment shows, but which also did live sport OBs, live light entertainment OBs, current affairs and drama. Also, at LWT, you dubbed your own shows, something Rob did, both as a Gram Op and a Supervisor, which he became in 1997. He became freelance in 2004 and mainly works on shows with audiences, and does a fair amount of live music too.  Productions include many stand-up DVDs by comedians such as Michael McIntyre and Lee Evans, and he has worked on Graham Norton’s talk show since its early Channel 4 days in 2001 right up to the present day. Other shows include 9 series of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!, Ninja Warrior UK, Dancing On Ice, Virtually Famous, Bruce Forsyth's Hall Of Fame, The Pride Of Britain Awards and Surprise Surprise.

Olly Grant - Dubbing Mixer, dubbingmixer TV

Olly has been mixing broadcast programmes, adverts, and promos for the last 15 years. Over this time he has worked with nearly every broadcaster and most of the top production companies in the UK. Olly's work is a mix of both long and short form content, and he has always had a real passion for sound and feels very lucky to work doing something which he still loves and enjoys. His aim is to give the viewer as good quality a soundtrack as possible. Over the past few years he has seen the gradual shift to the current loudness specification, a spec which Olly believes will give the viewer a better listening experience. He has been mixing using various forms of the loudness specification for about 7 years already so can hopefully pass on some of that experience to others. 

Dr Ben Shirley - Senior Lecturer, University of Salford

Ben is a Senior Lecturer in Audio Technology at the Acoustics Research Centre, University of Salford, UK. He received his MSc from Keele University in 2000 and his PhD from the University of Salford in 2013. His doctoral thesis investigated methods for improving TV sound for people with hearing impairments. His research interests include audio broadcast, spatial audio and also audio related accessibility solutions for people with sensory impairments. Dr Shirley was principal investigator on the ITC and Ofcom funded Clean Audio project which investigated methods to improve TV sound for people with hearing impairments and was a member of the UK Clean Audio Forum which contributed to international digital video broadcast standards. He is currently working on object-based audio broadcast projects including the EPSRC funded S3A project investigating future object-based spatial audio systems.

Ian Astbury - Senior Investigations Engineer, BBC Radio

Ian has over 30 years of BBC engineering experience, specialising in audio recording systems and media, transmission processing, lossy codecs and audio measurement.

His career has included roles across TV, Radio and Engineering training, working on diverse projects ranging from piloting emerging audio technology to commissioning coding and multiplexing systems for the BBC’s first digital TV services.  

Ian is an ardent supporter of EBU R128 and has been working to promote loudness measurement as the logical successor to quasi-peak meters such as the PPM.  Aware that the main focus has been on TV broadcasting, he is keen to ensure that radio is represented and has recently been examining the benefits of applying EBU R128 within radio workflows. 

Ian currently works in the Radio Technology team – a small group of specialists within BBC Engineering - based at Broadcasting House in London.

Watch Mike Loudness Seminar From Last Year

You can catch up on this session by Mike Thornton, which covered...

• Common delivery standard of method of measuring loudness – why introduce this?
• Audio and how it’s portrayed on different platforms
• Addressing dynamic ranges between dialogue and effects without jumping on TV programmes
• How would we do an audio show with EBU R128
• Learning from CALM and the difference in TV commercials
• How do you approach a mix when mixing for loudness across different genre?