Orban Loudness Meter for Windows and macOS
OPERATING MANUAL
2019 February (version 2.9.7)
V2.7 was a major upgrade that added support for up to 7.1-channel surround and the ability to analyze audio and the audio parts of video files offline for their BS.1770-4 Integrated Loudness, EBU R 128 LRA, highest tur peak level, and number of true peaks above 0 dBFS. The meter will graph the BS.1770-4 Integrated Loudness and peak swings of the CBS Loudness Meter as a function of time, and can display a histogram of the BS.1770-4 Integrated Loudness.
v2.9 is now available for both Windows and Mac. Windows V2.9 works with Windows Vista/7/8/10; It is not compatible with Windows XP and earlier. We will continue to make v2.0 available for Windows XP users. Mac V2.9.7 works with macOS 10.14 Mojave and some earlier versions.
Orban makes this software available free of charge, subject to the provisions of the License Agreement displayed by the software installer. This software is sponsored by Orban’s loudness controllers for FM radio, television, and streaming. We invite users who need highest-performance automatic loudness control to check out the Optimod models 1101e, 6300, 5700i, 8600Si, 8600, 8700i and 8685 at:
http://www.orban.com
and Optimod-PCn 1600 audio processing software for Intel/Windows at https://www.indexcom.com/products/optimodpcn/
If you have a previous version of the meter installed, a successful installation may require your doing more than just running the setup executable. Please follow the installation instructions in the Installation section starting on page 9.
Revision History
Version 1.0.0 was the original public beta release.
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Version 1.0.1:
Reduces CPU load caused by refreshing the meter’s display. This allows slower computers to operate at the meter’s maximum 100
Hz refresh rate, minimizing flicker.
Changes the color scheme to improve appearance and to make the meters easier to read.
Changes the graphic design of the single-bar meter display elements like peak hold to make them easier to read and to prevent them from being obscured.
On startup, checks whether the computer’s CPU supports the
SSE2 instruction set and exits gracefully if it does not.
Increase the gain of the VU meter by 10 dB for a given setting of the VU Meter Gain control. When the control is set to 0 dB and the meter is fed by a sinewave, the VU meter will now display the same level as the absolute peak meter.
Clarifies the readme (this document) to better explain how the meter interacts with your computer’s sound device(s).
Moves the Audio Input selector to the Settings page.
Version 1.0.2:
Causes the meters to be reset when disabled.
In computers running Windows 2000, the software now gives the correct result when testing whether the computer’s CPU supports the SSE2 instruction set.
Version 1.0.3:
To reduce CPU load and allow more versatile scaling of the loudness meter window, V1.0.3 uses Windows DirectDraw and requires DirectX 7 or higher to run.
Version 2.0.3:
Is available for Macs running OS X10.6 and higher.
Supports both the ITU BS.1770-1 and BS.1770-4 standards, user selectable. BS.1770-4 adds gating to the previous BS.1770-1 standard so that the meter ignores silence and is weighted toward louder program material, which contributes most to a listener’s
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perception of loudness. BS.1770-4 indicates only sounds that fall within a floating window that extends from the loudest sounds within the preset integration period to sounds that are 10 dB quieter than the loudest sounds.
Supports EBU R 128 measurements. R 128 calls for three meters: an ungated “momentary” meter having a time integration window of 400 ms, an ungated “short-term” meter having a time integration window of 3 seconds, and an “integrated” meter, having a user-selectable time integration window and gating as specified in BS.1770-4.
The Orban application provides a dedicated meter for the
“momentary” indication while indicating the “short-term” and “integrated” loudness on a second meter, where a yellow bar displays the short-term loudness and a single cyan segment indicates the integrated loudness. A numerical display of the integrated loudness appears to the right of the meter.
The Orban meter implements the “loudness range” measurement per EBU – TECH 3342, which is incorporated into R 128 by reference. The “loudness range” measurement is most commonly used in Manual Mode to assess the dynamic range of entire program segments.
EBU – TECH 3341 calls for two selectable meter scales and two selectable ranges. The scales are either absolute (in units of LUFS or LKFS, which are the same) or are relative with respect to a user-selectable reference level (which usually corresponds to the program’s Dolby Digital® dialnorm metadata value [in dB] and whose units of measure are LU or LK, which are the same). ATSC A/85, Annex K (“Requirements for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness of Commercial Advertising in Digital Television When Using Non-AC-3 Audio Codecs”) and EBU – TECH 3344 (“Practical guidelines for distribution systems in accordance with EBU R 128”) provide instructions on how to choose the reference level in systems that do not use Dolby Digital to convey the program to the consumer.
The ATSC A/85 2011, ITU-R BS.1770-4, and various EBU R 128related documents are available as free downloads and can easily be located with a search engine.
Allows manual start/stop operation of the meter per BS.1770-4.
Extends the maximum integration period to three hours for both program monitoring and manual modes. This allows the meter to
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measure the integrated loudness and LRA of most long-form program material such as feature films.
Changes the scale of the CBS Loudness Meter to match the scale of the EBU meters. This allows the readings of the BS.1770 and CBS meters to be compared easily. In addition, it changes the scaling of the “CBS Loudness Gain” control so that +10 dB on the
V1 meter is equivalent to “0 dB” on the V2 meter.
Supports Annex 2 of ITU-R Rec. BS.1770-4 (“Considerations for accurate peak metering of digital audio signals”) by adding a peak-reading meter with a sample rate of 384 kHz and a recovery characteristic that is the same as a PPM, which we chose arbitrarily to make the meter easy to read.
This “Reconstructed Peak” meter indicates the peak value of the signal following D/A conversion (including the reconstruction filter) with an accuracy of better than 0.2 dB, assuming that this signal path has constant group delay and a low frequency cutoff low enough to avoid introducing tilt into the waveform. This meter indicates “intra-sample peaks,” which can cause clipping in the analog section of a playback device even if the magnitude of the digital samples is constrained to 0 dBFS. This is a serious problem with many popular playback devices.
Assuming that the D/A converter and reconstruction filter in a playback device have constant group delay and that response in the analog signal path is flat to DC, the worst-case overshoot is +3 dBFS, as exemplified by a sinewave whose frequency is 25% of the sampling frequency and where the samples are taken 45 degrees before and after the zero-crossings of the sinewave. If the
“Reconstructed Peak” meter indicates higher than 0 dBFS, this indicates that clipping will occur in many playback devices.
The Orban meter does not implement the optional “HF preemphasis” and “DC block” blocks in the block diagram in Section 2 of Annex 2 of the BS.1770-4 standard. This is because the choice of pre-emphasis and DC blocking frequency characteristics is completely arbitrary, attempting to compensate for non-constant group delay and DC blocking that may or may not exist in the analog signal path of a given target playback device and which may or may not cause analog clipping from low frequency tilt even if they do exist.
See https://www.indexcom.com/whitepaper/zerodbfsplus/ for a
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more detailed discussion of intersample peaks.
Oversamples the PPM attack time processing to 384 kHz. This allows the meter to match the attack characteristics of EBU Tech. 3205-E more closely because this standard was originally developed for analog meters that are measuring analog signals.
Permits the important meter readings to be logged into a commadelimited text file that can be imported into any spreadsheet or graphing program for further analysis and display. The sample period of the log file is user adjustable via the “Logging Interval” control.
Adds support for the Microsoft WASAPI Loopback Interface (Windows Vista and 7/8 only). WASAPI Loopback eliminates the requirement for a sound device to support Wave I/O or what is traditionally called “Stereo Mix” to play and record/monitor files played through Windows Audio.
Fixes a bug that caused the sample peak meter to indicate the values of positive-going peaks incorrectly.
Extends the VU Gain control range to +20 dB. This allows the VU meter to be aligned to SMPTE (–20 dBFS) or EBU (–18 dBFS) lineup level.
Version 2.0.6:
Fixes a bug where the LRA display would not reset if the 1770 meter is reset while paused.
Adds Reset and Pause/Resume buttons for the LRA readout.
Limits LRA readout to BS.1770-4 mode.
Changed the clamping range for the BS.1770-4 long-term integrated readout to -70 LK on the lower bound, with no upper bound.
Hides the refresh rate slider in Windows Vista/7/8. It is still displayed for Windows XP and Mac OS X.
Fixes a potential race condition in the wave input code where the flags field was not being explicitly cleared in each wave buffer header.
Version 2.0.8:
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Adds support for ASIO devices. Note that to feed the Orban meter while connected to another application, a given ASIO device must have a “multi-client” driver, which many ASIO devices do not have.
Adds a “Channels” drop-down, which allows you to choose which audio channels the Loudness Meter monitors when a given sound device supports more than two channels.
Version 2.7.6:
Adds support for up to 7.1-channel surround.
Adds support for offline, faster-than-real-time file analysis.
Removes support for Windows XP and does not yet support the Mac OS.
Corrects a bug that caused the integration time of the BS.1770-4 Short-Term meter to be less than 3 seconds.
Version 2.7.8:
Corrects a bug that caused the BS.1770 Integrated Loudness to be indicated incorrectly in the Analysis tab.
Corrects a bug that could cause the number of reconstructed peaks above 0 dBFS to be miscounted in the Analysis tab.
Version 2.8.0:
Corrects a bug that caused the graph of BS.1770 Integrated Loudness in the Analysis tab to show the progress of the wholefile loudness integration process (i.e. the computation of the number shown in the BS.1770 Integrated Loudness box). Instead of tracking the localized loudness over time, this bug caused the graph to converge on the value of the whole-file Integrated Loudness at the right graph margin.
V2.8.0 displays the BS.1770 loudness as a function of time, using the value of the BS.1770 Integration Time control to set the time constant of the loudness integrator. The loudness graph is delayed with respect to the time-domain waveform by an amount equal to the integration time, and this lag may cause the loudness and time domain waveforms to be slightly misaligned graphically when long integration times are used.
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Note that if you change the value of the BS.1770 Integration Time control, the graph for a given file will not be recalculated unless you force a recalculation by quitting and restarting the Loudness Meter application, or by removing and then restoring the filename from the left window.
Corrects a bug that prevented BS.1770-2+ Integration Time settings of greater than 60 seconds from being saved and restored when quitting and then restarting the meter application. The maximum allowable integration time depends on the 1770 mode. The meter now checks the mode and limits the maximum time to 60 seconds in -1 mode and to three hours in -2+ mode.
Version 2.8.2 (for Windows):
Updates the LRA measurement to conform to EBU – TECH 3342 2015-03-25 DRAFT REVISION. This revision clarifies certain ambiguities in the original published LRA algorithm.
Version 2.8.3 (for Windows):
Corrects a bug that caused the meter to be incorrectly drawn on the screen when Windows Text Size was not set to “100%.”
Version 2.8.5 (for macOS):
Makes the meter compatible with macOS 10.12 Sierra and earlier macOS versions, and updates the feature set for the Mac version.
Version 2.8.8 (for Windows):
Corrects several bugs introduced in v2.8.3 (Windows build) due to a build error, including inaccuracies and missing data in the Analysis window, and potential instability on some systems.
Version 2.8.9 (for Windows and macOS):
Windows: Corrects a bug where installations of V2.8.3 and higher did not show the “ITU BS.1770 integrated” loudness in the analysis tab. The cyan graph was incorrectly drawn in black and the numeric value was not visible. This bug only occurred if V2.8.2 or earlier had not been previously installed on the computer.
macOS: Makes the feature set of the macOS version the same as the Windows version and unifies the Windows and macOS version numbers.
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Version 2.9.0 (for Windows):
Automatically implements the “invisible ‘ITU BS.1770 integrated’ loudness” bug fix from v2.8.9 without requiring the Orban audio loudness meter.properties file to be deleted manually. (macOS v2.8.9 does not require this fix, so there is no v2.9.0 for macOS.)
Version 2.9.5 (for Windows and MacOS):
Modifies the oversampling algorithm in the True Peak level calculation.
Corrects the peak level calculation in the MacOS version.
Disables the vertical UI layout in the Windows version.
Version 2.9.6 (for Windows and MacOS):
For Analysis, replaces the existing MP3 decoder with an MP3 decoder capable of decoding a wider variety of files.
(MacOS only) Corrects a bug that was causing the CBS loudness algorithm to produce incorrect values that were about 16 dB too low. The Mac version now agrees with the Windows version.
Version 2.9.7 (for MacOS):
For Analysis, corrects a bug that caused the analysis to crash with certain compressed files in MacOS 10.14.
Windows Hardware and Operating System
Requirements
Microsoft Windows® Vista (SP1 or greater), or 7/8/10.
Windows DirectX 7 or higher installed.
1.5 GHz or faster Intel or Intel-compatible processor that implements the SSE2 instruction set. Note that this is a function of the processor, not the operating system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2
1024x768 or larger display.
70 megabytes of free RAM in which to run the application.
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