About Levels

Hello. This is my first post. I work at an audio post house in Argentina. I have had a lot of experience doing mixes for theatrical release, however we have always sent the final mix in discrete-audio stems (6 for surround or 2 for stereo) to another facility for the print mastering, encoding, etc. I have a client in the US who has asked me to send a stereo WAV file in both 16 and 24 bit of a mix for a made-for-tv film. I have just learned that this is it. They will just layback and therefore, I have to get all the levels sorted out for proper tv reproduction. I am sort of panicking right now, because this was a tremendous misunderstanding and I have no experience doing this. I need to send this by the end of the day, so I haven't got much time to research. So my basic question is: What is the standard level for the lowest signal (softest passages in the mix) and what for the loudest picks measured in dBFS for TV? I have finished a well balanced mix, and now need to compress for TV specs. Should I use an L1 limiter? Any help would be tremendously appreciated. Carlos Vaes

Hola Carlos, If you have no delivery specifications, go with the standard, which is peaks at -10dBFS. Set your limiter ceiling at -10 and the threshold at -10.5 to catch the peaks. As for the minimum, there is no definitive standard. Do you have the "signal scope" plugin? There you can measure the Leq(A) which should be around -27. You can also check with a PPM meter (british standard) that the levels during dialogue move around the "4" mark. Buena suerte!

Muchas gracias, nucelar! After a couple of phone calls I learned they wanted peaks at -12dBFS. Anyway, your reply was much appreciated and gave me a good sense of direction. Saludos, Carlos