It’s been a long time since
I’ve written anything here. Not because
I had nothing interesting to say, it’s just that it’s been incredibly busy. Every year I seem to say that the last year
has been the busiest ever, and then the next one is even busier. Anyway, busy is good!
Every year, Sony Worldwide
Studios runs an internal tech conference alongside the Game Developers Conference
in San Francisco. I spoke there a couple
of years ago on the problems we as developers, publishers and platform holders
had with loudness on our platforms.
At the same conference, the
subject of loudness was raised by another couple of speakers, and we decided
there and then to form a group to look at the issues.
So in March 2011, the Sony
Worldwide Studios Audio Standards Working Group (ASWG) was formed, consisting
of Gene Semel & Marc Senasac (SCEA), Keiichi Kitahara (SCEJ) and myself
representing SCEE. The first task we set ourselves was to address our
loudness problem.
In the last couple of years
we’ve made considerable progress.
Firstly, we studied the state of loudness in current media, measuring the loudness of
over 120 games, TV shows, films and adverts. In November 2012 released our
first paper entitled ‘Average loudness and peak levels of audio content on Sony
Computer Entertainment platforms’, based on the ITU-R BS.1770 and EBU R128 specs.
Measuring the loudness of
interactive content is an inexact science, and we’ve been working with closely
with our own First Party Quality Assurance departments on how to effectively
measure the loudness of the titles we develop and publish.
Internally, our
recommendations have been adopted by all first party studios, worldwide. They’ve also been received very well by the
wider industry, and we’re currently in discussions with a number of industry
bodies about wider adoption.
So, I’m doing a number of
talks over the next couple of months about the work we’ve been doing, and how we
measure loudness in interactive media, both in production and at QA.
On Thursday
7th Feb 2013, I’m speaking at the Audio Engineering Society 49th International Conference on Audio for Games in London with an
imaginatively titled talk, ‘Measuring Loudness in Interactive
Entertainment’. I’m also on a panel the
same day entitled 'Theoretical,Technical & Practical Frameworks for Interactive Mixing: A Moderated PanelDiscussion', with Tom
Colvin, Jon Olive, Xavier
Buffoni, Stephan Schütze and moderated by John Broomhall.
At the end of March, I’m at the 2013 Game Developers
Conference at the Moscone Centre, San Francisco hosting the Audio Boot Camp
with Scott Selfon from Microsoft. I’m
also on a couple of panels; the first with Mark Yeend (Head of Audio, Microsoft), Gordon Durity (Audio
Director, EA) and Adam Boyd (Audio Director, Activision) about loudness
standards in the games industry, where we’re at and the progress we’ve made so
far. The second is entitled 'How to Mix a Video Game - And Not Die Trying' with Juan Peralta (Skywalker Sound) and
Once this two months of madness is done I'll post up a transcript of my loudness talk here.
Once this two months of madness is done I'll post up a transcript of my loudness talk here.
