New Requirements and Recommendations
The new requirements and recommendations listed in this document are issued in
response to the revised transmission loudness recommendations.
2.1 Assumptions
The requirements and recommendations described in this document assume that
broadcasting practices will ensure the following:
• Loudness normalization metadata accurately indicates program loudness.
• Programs without loudness normalization metadata are rendered at –23 LUFS.
Some of the following requirements may be waived in certain cases, such as regional
standards not compliant with ITU-R BS.1864 or EBU R128 recommendations.
2.2 Requirements
Include RF mode:
Consumer broadcast receivers containing a Dolby Digital, Dolby
Digital Plus, or Dolby Pulse decoder, and intended for DVB markets, must provide
RF mode dynamic range compression at the two-channel output. If Line mode is also
implemented, RF mode is the default setting.
Align loudness to –23 LUFS at the two-channel outputs:
Two-channel outputs of DVB products in RF mode match the level of –31 LUFS program output from Dolby
decoders to the level of a –23 LUFS program output from MPEG 1 LII decoders
within +1/–2 dB. This tolerance accommodates products intended for regions that
may adopt a –24 LKFS ungated measurement loudness specification.
Tip: You can achieve level matching by setting the dynamic range control to RF mode
(providing 11 dB gain, which boosts the –31 LUFS program to –20 LUFS) and then
attenuating the output by 3 dB, resulting in a loudness of –23 LUFS.
The EBU recommendation for the level-matching method is shown in Figure 1.
