AES Show 2024 NY

In a recent study, the authors interviewed five professional mastering engineers on the topic of contemporary loudness practices in music. Among the findings, all five mastering engineers targeted their peak levels very close to 0 dBFS and seemed somewhat unconcerned regarding true peak distortion emerging in the transcoding process, not adapting to the current recommendations of not exceeding -1 dB true peak. Furthermore, true peak measurements over the last four decades show that quite a few releases even measure true peaks above 0 dBFS in full quality. The aim of this study is to investigate the audibility of such overshoots by conducting a tailored listening test. The results indicate that even experienced and trained listeners may not be very sensitive to true peak distortion.