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"Loud Commercial" Legislation Proposed In US Congress
Hackajar writes "Have you ever caught yourself running for the volume control when a TV commercial comes on? Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has, and is submitting legislation that would require TV commercials in the US to stay at volume levels similar to the programming they are associated with. From the article: 'Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'"
I doubt very much it has anything to do with the networks.
These "loud commercials" don't have their volume turned up per se; they have their dynamic range compressed (just like a Metallica CD), and the gain increased, making the lows as loud as the highs. This is likely done at the production stage.
The same thing happens when you have your volume cranked up for a quiet scene that's suddenly interrupted by a loud noise, only in the case of these commercials, the whole thing is a "loud noise."
Even if the TV station or cable company are careful to keep everything broadcast safe, it will sound unreasonably loud because *everything* is at peak level, unlike the program you were watching which had highs and lows and a lower average volume.
I'm not sure how you could legislate this problem away.
I don't care why you're posting AC
My relative has a company that inserts local commercials into cable television. Frequently, local companies produce their own ads for him. Every new commercial is digitized, and he sets the volume on them one by one to be appropriate. However, the only way he figured out "appropriate" was by setting it to a a certain level, listening when it played _live_, and then calibrating future ads to the right volume based on that. His ear is the only standard for his ads precisely because the cable provider isn't doing any volume manipulation or standardization downstream of him.
It's really not a question of how loud the commercials are.
It's how much "compression" and "limiting" are used on the audio. This affects how loud it "seems", even though the needle on the meter never goes higher than the highest peak reached by the show. It's just that the needle seems stuck on that peak.
Compression and limiting are why listening to radio wears you out--it's called "listener fatigue". Your brain has to do extra work to process unnatural sound.
Radio stations do it so that they're the loudest thing on the dial as you scan across. Advertisers do it so that their commercial gets your attention.
Without legislators capable of learning about and understanding compression and limiting, don't look for any legislation that actually solves the problem.
Somewhat off-topic, but as long as we're talking about TV sound, I'm way behind on sending a letter to the people who make "Burn Notice" to thank them for the high quality of the show's audio. The actors don't mumble or get drowned out by sound effects or added music, which is more than I can say for a lot of other shows these days.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There are standards for loudness. Dolby, for example, sets one which DVDs using Dolby sound must adhere to. That's why the DVD-Audio release of an album is often much better mixed than the CD version. The CD is made as loud as possible, the DVD has to be at a standard level.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC