Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • International recommendation (television broadcasting)

The relative timing of the sound and vision components of a television signal (EBU Recommendation R37-2007)

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/ebu-2007-r37/ · record checked 9 October 2026

  • European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
  • European Broadcasting Union, Geneva

Standards body (European Broadcasting Union, an association of public service media organisations; an EBU technical recommendation)

Summary

The European broadcasters' one-page recommendation on how far television sound may run ahead of or behind the picture.

Key findings

  • Sets the overall, end-to-end limits at any output intended for transmission: sound no more than 40 ms before the picture and no more than 60 ms after it.
  • Asks that each stage of the production chain stay within 5 ms early to 15 ms late.
  • States that the limits rest on subjective tests of the offsets at which a failure of synchronism between lip movements and speech becomes perceptible to 50% of observers, and that the just-perceptible offset depends on the programme and the viewing distance.

Limits

Written for broadcasters' production and transmission chains and for general audiences, not for listeners with hearing loss or for the extra delay a venue's assistive listening system adds after the television. The subjective tests behind the limits are not described. First issued in 1986 and revised several times; the EBU's publications page lists this 2007 issue, dated 27 February 2007.

Read the original

tech.ebu.ch/publications/r037

Link checked . We link to the original and do not host copies.

Cited in

Cite this source

European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The relative timing of the sound and vision components of a television signal (EBU Recommendation R37-2007). European Broadcasting Union, Geneva. 27 February 2007. https://tech.ebu.ch/publications/r037 (accessed 9 October 2026).

The accessed date is when this library last checked the link; use the date you read it. To point readers to this summary instead, link to https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/ebu-2007-r37/

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