ENTERCOM's BOSTON cluster aired a special "Feed NEW ENGLAND Radiothon" on TUESDAY (5/5), raising funding to provide 156,684 meals for people in need through GREATER BOSTON FOOD … more

ROUND HILL MUSIC and its ROUND HILL RECORDS division has launched a new rock label, BLACK HILL RECORDS, and has signed its first three artists. The label, based in LOS ANGELES and distributed … more

Fans and followers of JUSTIN and HAILEY BIEBER will be happy to hear that the celebrity couple are doing a reality show for FACEBOOK WATCH.  "The Biebers On Watch" premiered … more

temple-news.com is the online extension of The Temple News, Temple University’s award-winning weekly student-run newspaper. Why it’s in the Showcase: temple-news.com uses a responsive custom theme which presents its stories cleanly, with minimal distraction. The site was designed with ease...

Top news and events from the newsroom of popular social networking service Facebook.

Your source for breaking news, news about New York, sports, business, entertainment, opinion, real estate, culture, fashion, and more. The New York Post is an American daily newspaper, primarily distributed in New York City and its surrounding area.

Microsoft news. Your view from the inside.

The City University of New York (CUNY) is the public university system of New York City, and the largest urban university in the United States.

Global News is the news and current affairs division of Global Television Network in Canada, overseeing all local and national news programming on the network’s twelve owned-and-operated stations.

Focused Update Highlights: Newer anticoagulants, known as non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants (NOACs), are recommended over the traditional warfarin to prevent stroke in people with atrial fibrillation (AFib). Weight loss is recommended for overweight or obese people with AFib.

Statement highlights: Oscillometric devices, which use an electronic pressure sensor within the blood pressure cuff, can reduce human error and the risk to the environment from older devices which use mercury. Patients who measure their blood pressure at home should use a device with an upper arm cuff that has been checked for accuracy by a healthcare provider.

Statement Highlights: To translate advances in scientific knowledge and innovations in stroke care into improvements in patient outcomes, comprehensive stroke systems of care must be in place to facilitate optimal stroke care delivery. New recommendations support policies that standardize the delivery of stroke care, lower barriers to emergency care for stroke, ensure stroke patients receive care at appropriate hospitals in a timely manner and improve access to secondary prevention and rehabilitation and recovery resources after stroke.

DALLAS, April 22, 2020 — Reports from the front lines of hospitals indicate a marked drop in the number of heart attacks and strokes nationally. But, COVID-19 is definitely not stopping people from having heart attacks, strokes and cardiac arrests. We ...

Statements Highlights: Adverse social factors, such as insurance status, food insecurity, lack of funds for medication and others, may lead to worse heart failure outcomes. Caregiving by family and friends of people with heart failure is increasingly...

Research Highlights: The PCORnet Blood Pressure Control Laboratory, a new collaborative partnership, analyzed electronic health record data from nearly 1.5 million patients including almost 6 million ambulatory visits with blood pressure measures. ...

Tour of the new boston Tea Party museum

This project presents a collective portrait of workers who keep New York City running. Their stories unfold in a series of multimedia profiles produced by students at the Columbia Journalism School.

DALLAS, April 3, 2020 —As physicians, scientists and researchers worldwide struggle to understand the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the American Heart Association is developing a novel registry to aggregate data and aid research on the disease,...

DALLAS, April 3, 2020 — With the COVID-19 pandemic, more patients are having difficulty breathing and requiring ventilators to help them breathe. As hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) volumes increase with COVID-19 patients, health care ...

The landscape of news has changed so much over the last few years that news about a particular topic or platform is readily available to anyone within an instant. With WordPress, I imagine that could be one of the perks of powering over 16% of the web, but it’s true that news is becoming incredibly accessible. In short, news is everywhere. Speaking of WordPress in general, you can of course acquire official direct news from WordPress News, but you can also take a peak behind the curtain and follow news in the making at Make WordPress.org. Though it’s only specific to the WordPress.com blogging platform, WordPress.com News is also worth watching for WordPress development news, as WordPress.com users often get access to new WordPress features before they’re released, so you’ll be able to try new features rather than just read about them. There’s more news than just direct official news, like I […]

There are many apps are available on Microsoft store for free which can be installed very easily but who knows? That is why we are sharing 8 Wallpaper Photos Apps On Microsoft Store You (Might) Never Knew For Windows. So, without any further ado let’s take a...

The post 8 Free Wallpaper Photos Apps On Microsoft Store You (Might) Never Knew For Windows appeared first on SmashingApps.com.

A study to determine if the sport-related concussion (SRC) rate is lower after a rule change that limited the amount and duration of full-contact activities during high school football practice sessions.

This week’s Designer News – № 537 – includes a Free Animation in Design System E-Book, Creating Playful Effects with CSS Text Shadows, UI Design Hygiene, Creating the NHS Patient Webinars Platform, pattern.css Pattern Library, CSS Selectors Explained, Open Source Dashboards UI Kit and so much more!

The post Weekly News for Designers № 537 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

This week’s Designer News – № 538 – includes 5 Simple Habits to Improve UX Research, New Media Queries You Need to Know, The Cost of Javascript Frameworks, The Hero Generator, Why Wireframes are Becoming Obsolete, Looking at coronavirus.data.gov.uk, Lots of Freebies and so much more!

The post Weekly News for Designers № 538 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

This week’s Designer News – № 539 – includes How to Create a Color Theme Switcher, a Morphing Gooey Text Hover Effect, Free UXUI Doc Kit for Sketch/Figma, Design System Interview Questions, Faking 3D Elements with CSS, the StyleStash Chrome Extension, Teach Yourself Code and a bunch more!

The post Weekly News for Designers № 539 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Film on Class of 2021 high school basketball players dried up in mid-March when the high school season ended, with most state tournaments (Iowa’s excluded) canceled. If you’re a college...

Carli Lang and Lillie Lamont loaded up Lang’s Chevy Impala and pulled away as their families waved goodbye, shrinking in the rearview mirror. The Vinton-Shellsburg seniors weren’t...

Editor’s note: The Gazette sports staff has compiled lists of its top 15 favorite sports movies. Each day, a different staffer will share some insight into one of their favorites. Some of them...

DES MOINES — More than 20 days after Iowa signed a $26 million contract with a Utah company to expand testing in the state, the machines the firm supplied to run the samples still have not...

I was happy to read Joe Coffey’s article in Sunday’s paper (“The birth of news in Linn County”) about the history of newspapers in Linn County. But I was disappointed that Mr. Coffey did not include mention of the Metro Libraries’ historical newspaper databases. All of the papers mentioned and pictured in his article (and many more!) are available in scanned, full-text, searchable versions, through the websites of the Cedar Rapids and Marion Public Libraries. There is no charge to browse or search these delightful old editions, and in fact, you don’t even need a library card.

I encourage anyone with an interest in local history, or just with a little time on your hands, to look at some of these old newspapers. It’s a delightful adventure to read about lives in other times.

Jo Pearson

Marion

The upcoming primary election is a pivotal moment for Iowa City. For the past several months, I have talked to people throughout the district who are ready for change. They believe their Democratic representative should show up for people throughout the community, especially those in need. They expect a legislator from Iowa’s bluest district to be a leader in the party, raising money to support Democratic candidates up and down the ticket and making the strongest possible case for progressive legislation. They are ready to start now in building the future of the Democratic Party and state government in Iowa. And I am honored that they are putting their trust in me.

There is a lot at stake in this election. The coronavirus has laid bare and magnified preexisting inequities — inequities brought about by the Legislature’s disinvestment in education, health care, and worker rights and safety. Small businesses are now struggling to survive, when for years the state has been giving large corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits. Water quality, climate change and gun violence still need our attention, even as we continue to invest in keeping people safe from COVID-19. We have never needed strong leadership more than we do now.

I will be a champion for progressive values because I have lived them. I know how hard it can be for people to get by even when they work hard. I grew up in a trailer in rural Florida. Neither of my parents graduated high school. My dad was a construction worker who suffered for years with emphysema. When his health insurance was canceled, my family had to choose between paying for his medicine and everything else. Fortunately, public education gave me the opportunity for a better life. My teachers taught me well and helped me to apply to college. Public university tuition was affordable then, and I was able to work my way through engineering school and law school.

Today, I am a law professor, an environmental engineer and a mother. I believe I have the skills, energy and passion that Iowa City needs at this critical point in time. I will show up for every member of our community and fight for a better future for all of Iowa.

It’s time for change in Iowa City. Please vote for me in House District 85 and help to build the future that Iowa deserves.

Christina Bohannan is a candidate in the Democratic primary for Iowa House District 85.

So I want to hear some feedback! Please let me know what you think so far. The theme is based on Matt Brett’s THiCK theme which you can find over at WooThemes.com. I modified the theme to fit my needs, and looks like I have to debug some issues now that the site is live. […]

The post The New Theme appeared first on WPCult.

DES MOINES — More than 20 days after Iowa signed a $26 million contract with a Utah company to expand testing in the state, the machines the firm supplied to run the samples still have not passed muster.

A time frame for completing the validation process for the Test Iowa lab machines is unknown, as the process can vary by machine, University of Iowa officials said Friday.

The validation process is undertaken to determine if the machines are processing tests accurately. To this point, the lab has processed the Test Iowa results using machines the State Hygienic Lab already had, officials told The Gazette.

Running side-by-side testing is part of the validation process. The lab then compares whether the machines yield the same results when the sample is run, officials said Friday. The side-by-side testing means the Test Iowa samples are being run at least twice to compare results.

The state does not break out how many of the 331,186 Iowans who by Friday have completed the coronavirus assessment at TestIowa.com have actually been tested. Test Iowa was initiated last month to ramp up testing of essential workers and Iowans showing COVID-19 symptoms. The state’s fourth drive-though location where people with appointments can be tested opened Thursday at the Kirkwood Continuing Education Training Center in Cedar Rapids.

On Friday, Iowa posted a fourth straight day of double-digit deaths from coronavirus, with the latest 12 deaths reported by the state Department of Public Health bringing the statewide toll to 243 since COVID-19 was first confirmed March 8 in Iowa.

State health officials reported another 398 Iowans tested positive for the respiratory ailment, bringing that count to 11,457 of the 70,261 residents who have been tested — a positive rate of more than 16 percent.

One in 44 Iowans has been tested for COVID-19, with 58,804 posting negative results, according to state data. A total of 4,685 people have recovered from the disease.

During a Thursday media briefing, Gov. Kim Reynolds told reporters a backlog of test results that occurred due to validation of Test Iowa equipment had been “caught up,” but some Iowans who participated in drive-through sites set up around the state indicated they still were awaiting results.

Reynolds spokesman Pat Garrett confirmed Thursday that “a very small percentage” of coronavirus test samples collected under the Test Iowa program could not be processed because they were “potentially damaged,” resulting in incomplete results.

There were 407 Iowans who were hospitalized (with 34 admitted in the past 24 hours) for coronavirus-related illnesses and symptoms with 164 being treated in intensive care units and 109 requiring ventilators to assist their breathing.

Health officials said the 12 deaths reported Friday were: three in Woodbury County, two in Linn County and one each in Black Hawk, Dallas, Dubuque, Jasper, Louisa, Muscatine and Scott counties. No other information about the COVID-19 victims was available from state data.

According to officials, 51 percent of the Iowans who have died from coronavirus have been male — the same percentage that tested positive.

Iowans over the age of 80 represent 46 percent of the COVID-19 victims, followed by 41 percent between 61 and 80.

Of those who have tested positive, state data indicates about 42 percent are age 18 to 40; 37 percent are 41 to 60; 14 percent are 61 to 80 and 5 percent are 81 or older.

Counties with the highest number of positive test results are Polk (2,150), Woodbury (1,532), Black Hawk (1,463) and Linn (813).

Earlier this week, state officials revamped the data available to the public at coronavirus.iowa.gov, with the new format no longer listing the age range of Iowans who died from coronavirus and providing information using a different timeline than before.

The governor did not hold a daily media briefing Friday due to scheduling conflicts created by Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Iowa. Garrett said Reynolds would resume her COVID-19 briefings next week.

John McGlothlen and Zack Kucharski of The Gazette contributed to this report.

I first released the Members plugin in September 2009. I had not long moved back home to Alabama from Atlanta, … Continue reading The Members plugin has a new home →

BIG NEWS: My custom Lightroom presets are now available and 50% off for a limited time with discount code HOLIDAY50. Link in profile!

This collection includes two styles (Everyday and Clean) that I use to edit every shot on this feed. I can’t wait to see what you all do with them! Stay tuned to my upcoming tutorials on how to put the presets to good use. ???? (at Toronto, Ontario)

The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union will be implemented on May 25th, 2018. We used this opportunity to rework many of our internal data processing structures, removed unnecessary trackers and apply this strict and transparent regulation also to all our customers worldwide.

Image from pixapay.com.

At Auphonic we store as few personal information as possible about your usage and production data.
Here are a few human-readable excerpts from our privacy policy about which information we collect, how we process it, how long and where we store it - for more details please see our full Privacy Policy.

Information that we collect

• Your email address when you create an account.
• Your files, content, configuration parameters and other information, including your photos, audio or video files, production settings, metadata and emails.
• Your tokens or authentication information if you choose to connect to any External services.
• Your subscription plan, credits purchases and production billing history associated with your account, where applicable.
• Your interactions with us, whether by email, on our blog or on our social media platforms.

We do not process any special categories of data (also commonly referred to as “sensitive personal data”).

How we use and process your Data

• To authenticate you when you log on to your account.
• To run your Productions, such that Auphonic can create new media files from your Content according to your instructions.
• To improve our audio processing algorithms. For this purpose, you agree that your Content may be viewed and/or listened to by an Auphonic employee or any person contracted by Auphonic to work on our audio processing algorithms.
• To connect your Auphonic account to an External service according to your instructions.
• To develop, improve and optimize the contents, screen layouts and features of our Services.
• To follow up on any question and request for assistance or information.

When using our Service, you fully retain any rights that you have with regards to your Content, including copyright.

How long we store your Information

Your Productions and any associated audio or video files will be permanently deleted from our servers including all its metadata and possible data from external services after 21 days (7 days for video productions).
We will, however, keep billing metadata associated with your Productions in an internal database (how many hours of audio you processed).

Also, we might store selected audio and/or video files (or excerpts thereof) from your Content in an internal storage space for the purpose of improving our audio processing algorithms.

Other information like Presets, connected External services, Account settings etc. will be stored until you delete them or when your account is deleted.

Where we store your Data

All data that we collect from you is stored on secure servers in the European Economic Area (in Germany).

More Information and Contact

For more information please read our full Privacy Policy.

Please do not hesitate to contact us regarding any matter relating to our privacy policy and GDPR compliance!

Back in late 2016, we introduced Speech Recognition at Auphonic. This allows our users to create transcripts of their recordings, and more usefully, this means podcasts become searchable.
Now we integrated two more speech recognition engines: Amazon Transcribe and Speechmatics. Whilst integrating these services, we also took the opportunity to develop a complete new Transcription Editor:

Screenshot of our Transcript Editor with word confidence highlighting and the edit bar.
Try out the Transcript Editor Examples yourself!

The new Auphonic Transcript Editor is included directly in our HTML transcript output file, displays word confidence values to instantly see which sections should be checked manually, supports direct audio playback, HTML/PDF/WebVTT export and allows you to share the editor with someone else for further editing.

The new services, Amazon Transcribe and Speechmatics, offer transcription quality improvements compared to our other integrated speech recognition services.
They also return word confidence values, timestamps and some punctuation, which is exported to our output files.

The Auphonic Transcript Editor

With the integration of the two new services offering improved recognition quality and word timestamps alongside confidence scores, we realized that we could leverage these improvements to give our users easy-to-use transcription editing.
Therefore we developed a new, open source transcript editor, which is embedded directly in our HTML output file and has been designed to make checking and editing transcripts as easy as possible.

• Edit the transcription directly in the HTML document.
• Show/hide word confidence, to instantly see which sections should be checked manually (if you use Amazon Transcribe or Speechmatics as speech recognition engine).
• Listen to audio playback of specific words directly in the HTML editor.
• Share the transcript editor with others: as the editor is embedded directly in the HTML file (no external dependencies), you can just send the HTML file to some else to manually check the automatically generated transcription.
• Export the edited transcript to HTML, PDF or WebVTT.
• Completely useable on all mobile devices and desktop browsers.

Examples: Try Out the Transcript Editor

Here are two examples of the new transcript editor, taken from our speech recognition audio examples page:

1. Singletrack Transcript Editor Example

Singletrack speech recognition example from the first 10 minutes of Common Sense 309 by Dan Carlin. Speechmatics was used as speech recognition engine without any keywords or further manual editing.

2. Multitrack Transcript Editor Example

A multitrack automatic speech recognition transcript example from the first 20 minutes of TV Eye on Marvel - Luke Cage S1E1. Amazon Transcribe was used as speech recognition engine without any further manual editing.
As this is a multitrack production, the transcript includes exact speaker names as well (try to edit them!).

Transcript Editing

By clicking the Edit Transcript button, a dashed box appears around the text. This indicates that the text is now freely editable on this page. Your changes can be saved by using one of the export options (see below).
If you make a mistake whilst editing, you can simply use the undo/redo function of the browser to undo or redo your changes.

When working with multitrack productions, another helpful feature is the ability to change all speaker names at once throughout the whole transcript just by editing one speaker. Simply click on an instance of a speaker title and change it to the appropriate name, this name will then appear throughout the whole transcript.

Word Confidence Highlighting

Word confidence values are shown visually in the transcript editor, highlighted in shades of red (see screenshot above). The shade of red is dependent on the actual word confidence value: The darker the red, the lower the confidence value. This means you can instantly see which sections you should check/re-work manually to increase the accuracy.

Once you have edited the highlighted text, it will be set to white again, so it’s easy to see which sections still require editing.
Use the button Add/Remove Highlighting to disable/enable word confidence highlighting.

NOTE: Word confidence values are only available in Amazon Transcribe or Speechmatics, not if you use our other integrated speech recognition services!

Audio Playback

The button Activate/Stop Play-on-click allows you to hear the audio playback of the section you click on (by clicking directly on the word in the transcript editor).
This is helpful in allowing you to check the accuracy of certain words by being able to listen to them directly whilst editing, without having to go back and try to find that section within your audio file.

If you use an External Service in your production to export the resulting audio file, we will automatically use the exported file in the transcript editor.
Otherwise we will use the output file generated by Auphonic. Please note that this file is password protected for the current Auphonic user and will be deleted in 21 days.

If no audio file is available in the transcript editor, or cannot be played because of the password protection, you will see the button Add Audio File to add a new audio file for playback.

Export Formats, Save/Share Transcript Editor

Save/Share Editor

The Save Editor button stores the whole transcript editor with all its current changes into a new HTML file. Use this button to save your changes for further editing or if you want to share your transcript with someone else for manual corrections (as the editor is embedded directly in the HTML file without any external dependencies).

Export HTML / Export PDF / Export WebVTT

Use one of these buttons to export the edited transcript to HTML (for WordPress, Word, etc.), to PDF (via the browser print function) or to WebVTT (so that the edited transcript can be used as subtitles or imported in web audio players of the Podlove Publisher or Podigee).
Every export format is rendered directly in the browser, no server needed.

Amazon Transcribe

The first of the two new services, Amazon Transcribe, offers accurate transcriptions in English and Spanish at low costs, including keywords, word confidence, timestamps, and punctuation.

UPDATE 2019:
Amazon Transcribe offers more languages now - please see Amazon Transcribe Features!

Pricing

The free tier offers 60 minutes of free usage a month for 12 months. After that, it is billed monthly at a rate of $0.0004 per second ($1.44/h).
More information is available at Amazon Transcribe Pricing.

Custom Vocabulary (Keywords) Support

Custom Vocabulary (called Keywords in Auphonic) gives you the ability to expand and customize the speech recognition vocabulary, specific to your case (i.e. product names, domain-specific terminology, or names of individuals).
The same feature is also available in the Google Cloud Speech API.

Timestamps, Word Confidence, and Punctuation

Amazon Transcribe returns a timestamp and confidence value for each word so that you can easily locate the audio in the original recording by searching for the text.
It also adds some punctuation, which is combined with our own punctuation and formatting automatically.

The high-quality (especially in combination with keywords) and low costs of Amazon Transcribe make it attractive, despite only currently supporting two languages.
However, the processing time of Amazon Transcribe is much slower compared to all our other integrated services!

Try it yourself:
Connect your Auphonic account with Amazon Transcribe at our External Services Page.

Speechmatics

Speechmatics offers accurate transcriptions in many languages including word confidence values, timestamps, and punctuation.

Many Languages

Speechmatics’ clear advantage is the sheer number of languages it supports (all major European and some Asiatic languages).
It also has a Global English feature, which supports different English accents during transcription.

Timestamps, Word Confidence, and Punctuation

Like Amazon, Speechmatics creates timestamps, word confidence values, and punctuation.

Pricing

Speechmatics is the most expensive speech recognition service at Auphonic.
Pricing starts at £0.06 per minute of audio and can be purchased in blocks of £10 or £100. This equates to a starting rate of about $4.78/h. Reduced rate of £0.05 per minute ($3.98/h) are available if purchasing £1,000 blocks.
They offer significant discounts for users requiring higher volumes. At this further reduced price point it is a similar cost to the Google Speech API (or lower). If you process a lot of content, you should contact them directly at sales@speechmatics.com and say that you wish to use it with Auphonic.
More information is available at Speechmatics Pricing.

Speechmatics offers high-quality transcripts in many languages. But these features do come at a price, it is the most expensive speech recognition services at Auphonic.

Unfortunately, their existing Custom Dictionary (keywords) feature, which would further improve the results, is not available in the Speechmatics API yet.

Try it yourself:
Connect your Auphonic account with Speechmatics at our External Services Page.

What do you think?

Any feedback about the new speech recognition services, especially about the recognition quality in various languages, is highly appreciated.

We would also like to hear any comments you have on the transcript editor particularly - is there anything missing, or anything that could be implemented better?
Please let us know!

In the classic loudness war, music and radio producers have been trying to create their recordings as loud as possible and loudness normalization was introduced to stop that. Now one can see the start of a new loudness target war, where podcasters set their loudness targets higher and higher, mainly triggered by high target recommendations of platforms like Spotify or Amazon Alexa.
In this article, we will show how to resist the loudness target war and still be compliant with major platforms.

Resist the loudness target war! (Photo by Nayani Teixeira)

What's the problem?

“Two or three years ago it seemed that many stations were finally realizing that better radio could improve ratings. And the major myth brought over from AM radio – that a louder signal, regardless of quality, attracts more listeners – appeared to be losing its strength,” writes Robert Orban. The times of excessively compressed audio, putting loudness over sound quality, were coming to an end. We were hoping the same when we wrote about the CALM Act and EBU R128 in 2012. Those measures were meant to make programs sound more evened out and set a standard for a reasonable loudness level.

Except, Orban's article was published in 1979 (PDF, p. 60 ff.), and he concludes: "The loudness war has escalated, and quality is once again being sacrificed." 40 years later, a new loudness target war is emerging. While, yes, radio and TV stations have widely adopted the new standards, prominent competitors in the audio market are pushing for higher loudness targets once again.

Loudness war: the trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music over time. (Screenshot delamar.de)

Why LOUDER is not better

Historically, the loudness war has escalated with the advent of digital technology. Peak level normalization and quasi peak program meters (QPPM) encouraged producers to push audio signals to the limit. Just shy of clipping, signals could now be compressed to the highest possible levels, using multiband compressors and limiters. While this lifted quieter signals up, transforming a waveform into a brick, marketers thought that the louder songs on CDs and almost yelling voices on FM radio would attract listeners. On the other hand, reduced dynamics makes audio less interesting and can lead to listener fatigue, as Rip Rowan pointedly illustrated in his 2002 article "Over the Limit":

WHY IS THE LOUDER IS BETTER APPROACH THE WRONG APPROACH? BECAUSE WHEN ALL OF THE SIGNAL IS AT THE MAXIMUM LEVEL, THEN THERE IS NO WAY FOR THE SIGNAL TO HAVE ANY PUNCH. THE WHOLE THING COMES SCREAMING AT YOU LIKE A MESSAGE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. AS WE ALL KNOW, WHEN YOU TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS THERE ARE NO CUES TO HELP THE BRAIN MAKE SENSE OF THE SIGNAL, AND THE MIND TIRES QUICKLY OF TRYING TO PROCESS WHAT IS, BASICALLY, WHITE NOISE. LIKEWISE, A SIGNAL THAT JUST PEGS THE METERS CAUSES THE BRAIN TO REACT AS THOUGH IT IS BEING FED WHITE NOISE. WE SIMPLY FILTER IT OUT AND QUIT TRYING TO PROCESS IT.

Hence, many spoken word producers and broadcasters luckily wisened up and committed to new standards, based on loudness normalization instead of peak normalization. LUFS, Loudness Units relative to Full Scale, is a unit that measures an audio track's average loudness. All segments of a program can then be normalized to a certain LUFS value. As we have discussed before, -23 LUFS is standard now for broadcasters of the EBU, which for example has led to advertising segments no longer being much louder than the rest of any particular program. For a short while, it seemed like a peace agreement, or at least a truce had been achieved in the loudness war.

Human loudness perception is based on average levels instead of peak levels. (Screenshot theproaudiofiles.com)

Loudness Targets and Dynamic Range

However, while LUFS adoption is increasing across the industry, this doesn't mean that people have stopped trying to be louder than everybody else. And indeed -23 LUFS is not the one-size-fits-all value. We have recommended -16 LUFS for podcasts ourselves. The loudness of a production played in a cinema should be different from one made for earphones and noisy listening environments. Some headphones expect a louder signal and don't have enough gain to work with -23 LUFS under all circumstances.

The closer a production gets to 0 LUFS though, the less dynamic range can be reproduced. However, the dynamic range also depends on the dBTP, the maximum True Peak level, which indicates the level of the highest possible peak value. For instance, the aforementioned EBU R128 standard of -23 LUFS also defines a -1 dBTP. The difference between the LUFS and dBTP levels is called Peak to Loudness Range, PLR. For EBU R128 the PLR would be 22 LU (Loudness Units), a podcast with -16 LUFS and -1 dBTP has a PLR of 15 LU. Thus, the PLR is a measure of the maximum possible dynamic range of an audio production.

Platforms: Apple, Google, Amazon, and Spotify

Our already pretty high recommendation of -16 LUFS, -1 dBTP for mobile listening was also adopted by Apple's best practices for podcasts and recommendations for Google Assistant. Some are pushing it too far, though. A daily updated analysis by podnews shows that many podcasts are much louder than -16 LUFS.

Distribution of loudness across a selection of podcasts. (Screenshot podnews.net)

This might in part be due to specs published by other competitors in the audio space:

Amazon, for instance, recommends -14 LUFS at -2 dBTP for Alexa skills, meaning a PLR of only 12 LU. While this might work for Alexa's synthesized voice, which doesn't have much variability, it produces a dynamic range too low for spoken word content.
However, Amazon also says that a skill may be rejected if the program loudness is lower -19 LUFS or higher -9 LUFS, therefore a target of -16 LUFS is perfectly fine, which means that Alexa's robot voice leads by 2 LU compared to the audio content.

Spotify normalizes audio to the equivalent of about -14 LUFS, -1 dbTP, but they still use ReplayGain, which is not exactly the same as LUFS but gives similar results. Spotify mainly decreases the volume of overly loud productions, but can also increase the volume on some playback devices if the audio is much too soft.
For pop music, -14 LUFS is acceptable, but for podcasts or classical music, it is too high. However, (pop) music can always be played a bit louder compared to speech, therefore a loudness target of -16 LUFS for podcasts is fine on Spotify as well.

Make LUFS, not war

If producers just use the highest recommended target and therefore the loudness (target) war goes into another battle, we will hear more compressed, distorted voices once again, lacking emotion and many subtleties that are reflected in the dynamic range of how we speak.

Setting a loudness target higher than -16 LUFS does not improve the listening experience in any way. However, many productions would benefit from sensitively adjusting differences in dynamics throughout the production, lifting up quieter segments, lowering loud segments, and treating speech and music differently. As pointed out in a presentation recently (video, in German), you can do that directly in your DAW or use a leveler to automate dynamics processing.

Instead of just raising the loudness target, adjusting differences in levels can help to make the listening experience much more enjoyable.

Recent album releases suggest that the music industry is still in the middle of the loudness war, often limiting the peak to loudness range to single digit LU values. (By the way, your vinyl-buying friend is right, vinyl records do sound better because they don't work with the highest compression rates.) Hopefully, podcasters, radio producers and other spoken word artists, as well as the platforms that host and publish their productions, can resist the temptation of louder and louder audio.
Make (no more than -16) LUFS, not war!

Conclusion

With some podcasts, smart speakers and streaming platforms trying to be louder than the competition, the listening experience deteriorates. However, podcasts can sound great and loud enough even in noisy environments, when well produced:

• Never set a loudness target higher than -16 LUFS for spoken word audio.
• If your audio is too quiet, try lifting up quieter sections and reducing the volume of louder sections, directly in your DAW or by using a leveler.
• These settings will work fine on all current platforms, including Amazon Alexa and Spotify.

Resist the loudness target war!

The Australian Government has introduced two new regional visas which requires migrants to commit to life in regional Australia for at least three years. This new visa opens to the door to permanent residency for overseas workers from a wider range of occupations than before — including such occupations as real estate agents, call centre […]

The post New regional visas for Australia appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.

Australia has introduced a streamlined, priority visa pathway for highly skilled and talented individuals to work and live permanently in Australia. The Government and industry has recognised there is growing competition for talent around the globe and to compete we must have a pathway that leads to certainty for people wishing to come to Australia. […]

The post Australia is recruiting – New Global Talent Visa appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.

International students who have been in Australia for longer than 12 months who find themselves in financial hardship will be able to access their Australian superannuation. The Government will undertake further engagement with the international education sector who already provide some financial support for international students facing hardship. International students working in supermarkets will have […]

The post Student visa holders and New Zealand citizens in Australia and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.

It’s been a few months since the release of the Recipe Card Blocks PRO plugin, and our team continued to release new updates constantly for both versions of the plugin: Free & PRO. As we’ve released many major updates for both versions in the past months, let’s make a quick overview of the most important changes and new features we’ve […]

We’re very excited to announce a new major update for our Reel theme. The new 3.0 version brings new color schemes and many improvements to the Portfolio Showcase widget. What’s new in 3.0? 5 New Color Schemes + 2 New Theme Styles Full-width header option New styles & options for Portfolio Showcase widget 5 New Color Schemes After long research […]