Is the K-System compatible with the DYNAMIC RANGE System?
Yes, and very much so! The K-System is perfectly suited for giving modern productions more dynamics in the production and mixing phases. The K-System involves calibrating the studio monitors with calibrated pink noise to a specific loudness (SPL) level which is then marked onto the volume control. If you calibrate your control room to the K-14 standard, your corresponding K-14 loudness metering shows how much the average loudness can vary with reference to a 0 line.
The decisive concept is a specified listening level. As soon as you compress the music too much, the control room becomes too loud. Instead of lowering the loudness knob on the studio monitors, simply compress a little less. The loudness knob stays at the reference position. This idea is based on the Dolby standard as used in the film industry, which also uses a fixed monitoring level.
Read more on this at: www.digido.com
Hi all :) A friend of mine
Hi all :)
A friend of mine and I are designing a 4 ch preamp.
He kind of insist on having VU meters on the thing for each channel, I say, with digital recording systems more common nowadays, we need more of a PPM type of metering.
But then again, I say that we might not even need metering at all!
I use a RME firewire800 converter unit and Nuendo3 software. With this system I have plenty of meters, with quite a few choices of ballistic and resolution.
Some may argue, and I may concur, that getting the signal well controlled between boundaries right at the preamp is the way to go.
Hmmmm.... yeah, I guess...
But getting the proper ballistics from a mid range meter dedicated hosting, like the Siffam, needs quite a bit of circuitry.
Anyway to cut the discussion short, I think nowadays, the best metering system in this age would be Bob Katz 'K system' metering.
I have an article on this somewhere, but while I dig for it, is someone have knowledge about this system and even, perhaps, a design for it?
If I remember well, mr Katz system specifies quite a different attack and release time for the ballistic but more importantly, it is referenced to DBFS scale.
Which makes a lot of sense....
Any comments, thoughts, diatribe, criticism or anything on the subject? ::)
a friend of mine... K-System
I like the K-System a lot too. You will find all details on www.digido.com. For my opinion the K-System works best in the mixing process because it inspires to use more dynamic. It is defined in a relation with the sound pressure level. Because of this I think it doesn´t make any sense in a mic-pre. The only interesting information at this stage is the peak level to avoid overs. To the downside we have sufficient depth.
Home-made audio production is also at fault.
At one point, an indie artist in the electronic realms made a rather good D 'n' B track which I downloaded, but the playback level was heading into my sound cards clipping levels VERY often. It seems that at one time, 1.414 volts represented the maximum peak voltage for Line level audio in home stereos and that value was adhered to by most early PC audio cards. This artist had just purchased a NEW audio card that allowed 2.00 V peaks, and he mastered his D 'n' B track to suit his needs, and then published that for everyone.
Needless to say, his track sounded terrible everywhere I played it: in my car MP3 deck, via headphones connected to my PC sound card speaker output, Line out of my PC sound card into Line in on my home stereo, through a portable MP3 player, everywhere. I emailed him a polite request to remaster it at lower levels which were more accurate to line level outputs and that would restore industry standard dynamic range (for everyone), but his response was essentially this: "too bad your older crappy equipment is obsolete, mmmmna, but my NEW system allows 2.00 volts and I'm going to use it ALL." I replied, again gently mentioning that he was defeating an industry standard for line level outputs, he just ignored that last email. I checked in on him a few months later, his MP3s weren't being downloaded and clipping was the common complaint. He eventually gave in because of EVERYONE complaining but by then, my interest had moved elsewhere.
Seems that by increasing the dynamic range CAPABILITY for PC sound card audio line levels, someone decided that ALL the rules had changed for EVERY sound card.
For this reason, amongst many others, I despise marketing types.
K-Metering & DR Metering
Could you explain more about the relation between the K-System and the DR System. In the K-System we have K-12, K-14, K-20. What are the corresponding numbers (from value A to value B for example) in the DR system?
It is mixing vs. final product
K-System is a standard to set up a mixing environment. DR is meant to measure the dynamics of the final product. Both exist in order to preserve dynamics, but searching for corresponding numbers leads nowhere, I think.
With adequate hardware, mixing at K-20 should be always fine. Then, during the mastering, right before quantization to 16 bits would be limiting the whole thing to DR14 (or softer) if necessary.
Experience will tell the truth
I believe both systems have to be anticipated and our ears have to learn what these numbers mean. So use the K-System and verify with the DR-Meter. Taking advantage of both systems should lead to great masters in the future.