A new approach to the autonomous control of faders for multi-track audio mixing is presented. The algorithm is designed to generate an automatic sound mix from an arbitrary number of monaural or stereo audio tracks of any sample rate, and to be suitable for both live and post-production use. Mixing levels are determined by the use of the EBU R-128 loudness measure, with a cross-adaptive process to bring each track to a time-varying average. A hysteresis loudness gate and selective smoothing prevents the adjustment of intentional dynamics in the music. Real-time and off-line software implementations have been created. Subjective evaluation is provided in the form of listening tests, where the method is compared against the results of a human mix and a previous automatic fader implementation.

Authors: Mansbridge, Stuart; Finn, Saoirse; Reiss, Joshua D.
Affiliation: Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
AES Convention: 132 (April 2012) Paper Number: 8588
Publication Date: April 26, 2012
Subject: Emerging Audio Technologies

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