Nugen Audio has announced that MasterCheck Pro is being updated to Version 1.5  with enhancements embracing support for the Apple AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) iTunes Plus native OS X codec and also the PSR (Peak to Short-Term Loudness Ratio) measurement update to AES Engineering Brief 373.

Real-time Monitoring Of Apple AAC iTunes Plus Native OS X Codec

MasterCheck Pro now supports the Apple AAC iTunes Plus native OS X codec, which will be a great help for people producing to the MFIT (Mastering for iTunes) standard as they can now take advantage of being able to monitor the native Apple codec in OS X in real-time from within the comfort of your chosen DAW like Pro Tools or Studio One.

Support For AES Engineering Brief 373 - Peak To Short-Term Loudness Ratio (PSR)

At the 143rd AES convention in New York in October 2017, mastering engineer Ian Shepherd presented our paper defining the PSR, or Peak to Short-term loudness Ratio, AES Engineering Brief 373 (Measuring Micro-Dynamics — A First Step: Standardizing PSR, the Peak to Short-Term Loudness Ratio), a new method of measuring musical dynamics for optimal online playback. Ian Shepherd was the lead author of the paper, which is a collaboration with Ian Kerr (MeterPlugs), Eelco Grimm (Grimm Audio), Paul Tapper (Nugen Audio) and Mike Kahsnitz (RTW) with the intention to encourage consistency and adoption amongst manufacturers and engineers, and harmonise usage.

Plugins like MasterCheck Pro already display PSR, however, different manufacturers have used slightly different methods to calculate PSR. To avoid confusion, the contributors to this paper are working together to standardise the details.

Version 1.5 of MasterCheck Pro updates its PSR measurement in line with the AES panel recommendations contained within that brief, where the following excerpt from its introduction says...

The ‘loudness war’ still rages, but with major digital streaming services switching to loudness normalization by default, its end is near. Since absolute loudness is no longer effective at making music ‘stand out,’ engineers are finding it much more effective to optimize micro-dynamics instead. The overall PLR (Peak to Loudness Ratio) of an audio track is widely recognized as a useful metric to assess the overall micro-dynamics of a section of audio and the likely results of normalization. However, short-term variations are also important, especially when judging the results of compression and limiting on audio quality, and these can be usefully assessed by a real-time property known as PSR (Peak to Short-Term Loudness Ratio). PSR is found to be straightforward and intuitive to use...

Howie Weinberg, Mastering Engineer, On MasterCheck Pro

With over 200 Gold Records, 30 years experience and an estimated quarter of a billion records sold, Howie Weinberg has one of the most prolific careers in the music industry. Watch NUGEN Audio's video of Howie in his new Los Angeles Mastering Studio, as he chats about mastering for the internet age with MasterCheck Pro.

Why Do We Need Codecs?

The term codec is an acronym for coder/decoder. Music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify use codecs to reduce the data bandwidth required to stream audio to the consumer. Codecs affect audio quality, so it is important to be able to audition them in real-time in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) like Pro Tools or Studio One in order to mitigate side effects caused by intersample clipping and bit depth reduction.

Rescue from this sorry situation is always at hand, however, thanks to NUGEN Audio’s award-winning MasterCheck Pro, perfectly positioned as an essential mix optimisation toolset for mixing and mastering for streaming services.

MasterCheck Pro At NAMM

Version 1.5 of MasterCheck Pro will be showcased by NUGEN Audio on booth #14005 at The 2018 NAMM Show, January 25-28 in Anaheim, California. Come check it out!