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Quiet Victories Won In the Loudness Wars
Stowie101 writes with a few pieces from an article on what's been happening in the fight against over-compressed radio music and deafening tv commercials: "The first major step towards the elimination of heavily-compressed music could be the International Telecommunications Union's ... measurement of loudness that was ... revised in 2011. ... Acting to rectify the problem on the broadcast side of the issue, many European and Asian broadcasters are adopting loudness standards that are based on the criteria first introduced by the ITU. Here in the U.S., the federal government has also been proactive to improve the quality of broadcast television. By the end of 2012, the broadcast community will have to follow the CALM Act that requires commercials to be played at the same volume as broadcast television. In terms of music and recording, these broadcast standards do not apply. But Shepherd theorizes the measurement standards will be applied to the production of music. 'Measuring loudness, in general, isn't easy. Now the ITU has agreed on a new "loudness unit:" the LU. You can measure short- and longer-term loudness over a whole song. They've also agreed on guidelines for broadcast; what the average loudness should be and how much you can vary it. The recommendation has been made law in the U.S. for advertisements and is also being adopted in the U.K. and all over the world. All the major broadcasters here — Sky, the BBC, ITV — have agreed to follow the standard.'"
And no real gain.
Less gain is the whole point.
The law was passed because too many audio sources had excessive gain.
"By the end of 2012, broadcast televisionâ¦"
Broadcast what?
Oh, I think I've heard of this. It's like YouTube if you could only choose one of 6 videos to watch, someone else decided when to hit "play" and they made you watch 3 minutes of ads for every 7 minutes of video.
because 70dB is well below the threshold of pain.
He mentioned a "local" ad from a lawyer. I would imagine even at 1db it would cause pain. Possibly even with mute on.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
There's an old quote from the late 1800s where someone grumbled that Christmas seemed to start earlier every year - so early, they said, that barely has december started than Christmas takes over. Christmas today starts at the beginning of October, when the first advertising starts. So that's an advancement of two months per century. Extrapolating wildly, that means by the year 2500 Christmas will be in effect continually.