>So it's a system for inexperienced engineers?
It's a system for everyone.
>I ask this because experienced and/or professional engineers have been able to achieve exactly what you described since the dawn of this profession, without the K-System. It's called gain staging and using your ears.
Yeah, it's about gain staging and using the ear. The difference is that the SPL in the room have a factual connection with RMS level of the music. This part of gain staging have mostly been overlooked. The SPL is usually set arbitarily by the engineer. Connecting these two makes working with audio a lot easier!
It also frees the mix engineer from worries of digital overs, if working at K20, which gives 20dB of headroom above the RMS level.
>Professional mastering engineers have also been doing this forever without the K-system.
Nope. Instead of referencing a track to the other tracks on the album, the track is simply referenced to the loudness in the room. Makes it all a lot easier.
>It also does seem genre specific, because people seem to be calibrating their equipment based on the type/genre of music the're doing.
The system is 100% genre free, it have nothing to do with the type of music.
Please, read the article, it explains it a lot better than I do.
http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule...der_page_id=59
Andreas