[Robert Orban[_2_]]

ORBAN POSTS V2.0 OF ITS FREE LOUDNESS METER SOFTWARE FOR WINDOWS

March 13, 2012 San Leandro, California - Orban today posted V2.0 of
its free loudness meter application.

V1 worked only on Windows® PCs running XP, Vista, and 7; new in V2 is
support for Intel-based Mac computers running OS10.6 or higher. Also new
is comprehensive support for the ITU-R Rec. BS.1770-2 and EBU R 128
metering standards. 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.1770-2. Additionally, V2 measures Loudness
Range per EBU - TECH 3342, which is incorporated into R 128 by
reference.

Loudness meter scales have been revised to conform to EBU - TECH 3341
and loudness can be displayed in absolute terms or relative to a user-
adjustable reference level, which is typically -23 LBFS or -24 LKFS.

Manual start/start mode is now available and maximum integration time
has been extended to three hours, allowing users to measure the BS.1770
-2 Integrated loudness and Loudness Range of long-form programming like
feature films.

Many CDs are now mastered with gross amounts of digital-domain clipping,
which can cause overshoots after D/A conversion. When clipped by analog
circuitry in consumer playout devices, these overshoots will add still
more distortion compared to the distortion added by the digital clipping
alone. A new Reconstructed Peak meter runs at 384 kHz sample rate and
indicates the peak level of the audio after D/A conversion with an
accuracy of better than 0.2 dB, which is better than that required in
Annex 2 of ITU-R Rec. BS.1770-2. The Reconstructed Peak meter allows
mastering engineers to anticipate analog-domain clipping and to prevent
it by slightly lowering maximum peak levels in the digital domain.

The meter now allows users to write comma-delimited ASCII log files that
can be imported into any common spreadsheet or graphing application for
graphical display. Typical applications include graphing loudness vs.
time and creating histograms. Logging can also be used to verify that
television stations in the U.S. are complying with the CALM Act.

The VU meter has been revised so that it can indicate levels above 0 VU.
0 VU can now be aligned to common line-up levels like -20 dBFS (SMPTE)
or -18 dBFS (EBU).

The PPM is now oversampled at 384 kHz, so it more accurately indicates
the effect of short-duration peaks.

The application now supports WASAPI Loopback operation in Windows Vista
and 7. This allows the meter to monitor any sound device that uses the
Windows WAVE audio system without depending on the specific features of
a given sound device's driver.

The Orban software is free to end users and is sponsored by Orban's
Optimod-TV loudness controllers, including the 1101, 6300, 6585, and
8685. It can be downloaded from www.orban.com/meter. Although the
current meter supports only mono and stereo programs, future
enhancements will include 5.1-channel surround metering and loudness
analysis of files in several formats.