With the continuous technical development of television broadcast, loudness is an important production issue for TV and radio broadcasters around the world. In China, this recently involved a two-day summit on loudness control and standardisation held in Xining, Qinghai Province.
A panel of broadcast manufacturers and engineers participated in the event, which also allowed Beijing Pacific Budee Technology Development Co to present a selection of relevant professional broadcast equipment.
The morning of the first day saw Qin Yili and Zhou Kesheng from the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation’s technical production centre present talks on the true peak and loudness level requirements in digital television, and the implementation of loudness control at the Jingsu Broadcasting Corporation.’
In the afternoon, speakers from CCTV’s technical production centre, audio department, Yuan Xuecheng & CCTV broadcast centre discussed loudness control from different perspectives under the headings ‘Practice and Control of Loudness in TV Production’ and Practice and Control of Loudness in TV Broadcast. As one of the most influential broadcasters in China, CCTV pays great attention to loudness, and has made measure in advance. The presentations gave everybody an insight into the experience gained at CCTV in adherence to the loudness standard in its production and broadcast.
This was followed by Budee Technical Manager and renowned recording engineer Li You with a presentation called Touch of Imagination’. Among the artists he has recorded and mixed are Eason Chan and Cui Jian. He shared some of his knowledge and experience, and also covered the products that Budee distributes – including, Avid, DK Technologies, Blie Microphones, Wheatstone, Quested, Telefunken, Bricasti, Summit Audio, Manley, Slate MT and Bettermaker.
On the second day, DK Technologies CEO Karsten Hanes discussed loudness considerations in broadcast and various kinds of production. He also talked about the loudness standard in different countries, and the features of DK products that provide synchronisation between audio and video.
Wheatstone’s Brad Harrison & Paul Picard introduced their company’s new IP networked consoles, explaining their native IP interface to most popular production automation systems, AES67 compatibility, and the scalability, affordability and adaptability of IP audio networking. They presented a range of consoles using WheatNet-IP audio network through the Gibraltar IP Mix Engine.
Li Liang of Avid China discussed the Avid Venue S6L mixing system, which offers powerful processing with more than 300 channels. It provides onboard plug-ins and Pro Tools integration, but with more processing power and track counts than Avid has previously been able to offer, as well as a comprehensive array of network and I/O.
The seminar is presently one of the most important for China’s broadcast engineers and technicians, allowing them to share ideas and discuss the technology in the industry.
