Somehow I'm guessing it will only take advertisers a month to get around this. It seems to me broadcasters could put a volume limiter on the commercials or something if we really wanted to end the ridiculously loud ads.

Then again, I'm no broadcast engineer.

Yes, finally. If i have to hear another full volume commercial about treating herpes outbreaks, I'm gonna lose it. Not good time. Bad times.

I will pay any price that ask for this....if it's good that is. We're constantly fighting over the remote because movie dialogue is too low and commercial volume is too high

@GeekyNerdGuy: The day after this happens, broadcasters would offer marketers an "enhanced sound package" for a fee, and we'd be back to square 1 with networks earning more.

@Darrone: Some of us need to hear about those herpes treatments...

What channel is that?

Sounds good, but as far as the "night mode" thing goes, I'd rather have a really good pair of Bluetooth headphones. If I know my wife, she isn't putting up with me watching "Ghost in the Shell" at 0300 hours, no matter how good the compression.

Now for something that solves the problem of annoyingly loud neighbors...

I'd like something like this for my computer. Too many times I've been moving along websites, and comes across a video with much too quiet sound. And then I'll come to another one that's much too loud...

I'm not sure if this would work, considering that those ads only sound "louder" when in actuality they emit the same db level just over a shorter frequency range.

This sure sounds like Volume Normalization, a feature that many media player softwares (such as Media Player Classic) have built-in. I've also seen devices advertised that were designed to add this feature to your TV (years ago).

I remember I was fairly successful doing this in 1990 with my Marantz receiver and its "Night Mode" volume compression, and bumping up the center channel to increase dialogue volume.

I'm sort of a fan of "less is more" school....

Can't we just put all the advertisers on a spaceship and send it into the sun?

Maybe make it a prize they've won or something....

@robotleawesome, AvWuff: You guys should check out the FAQ I linked above—my impression is that this technology is trying a smarter approach than what's been done in the past to tackle these problems, again, not just compression but a more complex analysis of "loudness."

@ChromiumSwitch: Yep, I solved the problem with a nice pair of Sennheiser wireless headphones hooked up to the TV in our bedroom. Got them on eBay for a reasonable price.

Interesting, this Dolby is claiming, without saying right out, that they can master any audio source. No audible pumping and breathing or artifacts from compression and normalization and smart EQ adjustment based on the sound source (voice, music, etc). In effect mastering already mastered soundtracks.

I'll have to hear it to believe it. And if it actually works as well as they say it does, with the user controlling the parameters, then gee whiz, maybe all those highly paid mastering engineers with golden ears will all go extinct.

Sorry. Sarcasm.

@AvWuff: This is not normalization, which only increases overall level so the loudest peak reaches maximum gain, without necessarily having a significant influence on average levels.

@robotleawesome: Ads don't sound louder due to reduced frequency range (although they have that too), they sound louder because 1) the overall dynamic range is severely limited/squashed, enabling 2) overall average - not peak- volume to be maximized.

@Wilson Rothman: This does sound like a form of compression. There are many types of compression and "smart compression." Apparently, this is a type of multi-band compression that takes into account various parameters that influence overall perceived loudness such as the Fletcher-Munson curve of frequencies which influence perceived loudness, perhaps the ability to identify program material, etc.

My XBR5 has a feature that stops the audio imbalances during commercial breaks.

isnt there a law against commercial volumes being louder than content volumes? if there isnt, shouldnt there be? Car lots seem to be the major culprit and they drive me crazy!

One way to solve the problem would be to have an option on your TV you can turn on that would make your TV change channels to something more interesting and less loud when a commercial came on.

Or maybe your TV could mute itself and give you a huge message that appears over the commercial, "You have X seconds left to grab a beer before your show resumes."

@frigg: I never said it wasn't compression, I just said it wasn't "straight-up compression" which your excellent elaboration clearly corroborates. Say Hi to Fletcher and Munson for me!

...........just stay away from spanish television.

>>>>isnt there a law against commercial volumes being louder than content volumes? if there isnt, shouldnt there be?

Damn straight. It's gotten so bad, I just mute the commercials entirely and grab a magazine until the show comes back on.

@GeekyNerdGuy: It really just comes down to who is running the encoder when transferring ads into the system.

I used to work for a local ad insertion group and our supervisor bitched us out if we forgot to tone down the audio levels of the ads. He hated hearing blaring ads at home, so he sure didn't want us to contribute to the problem.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are not as considerate (or who are just too lazy to adjust the levels properly).

@Wilson Rothman: I stand corrected!

And I'll give Fletcher and Munson your love... they're hogging the sheets as usual, those smiley-faced frequency-curved bastards!

Hey Giz,
When you do your testing, switch from TV to Game Consoles as well. For some reason when I go from watching TV to play on the Wii, the Wii volume is WAY louder then the TV channels audio output. I think this could be a great addition to our "technology of the future is here now" electronics.

Imagine the possibilities!!! ... you could hack the eeprom on your TV to mute all the ADS (detected via CC or something like that) so when they start, you leave the room... and when the show is back on, you'd know 'cuz you could hear it!

The folks pumping up the volume are actually the advertisers who make the sound as loud as they can within their recording. So, broadcasters do not need to raise the volume level when the folks paying for the advertising are essentially doing it for them.

As for technology that will somehow defeat that, I suspect it can work, but only to a certain extent. While it is not quite as simple as having a sensor that lowers the volume, ultimately that is what it needs to do. The problem is that we will have a difficult time knowing if it is even working. Short of having two TV's (one with and one without), it is going to be difficult to tell what this technology is really doing.

That said, I rarely see commercials thanks to a DVR, and the few times I put myself through the pain of live TV, I am often more interested in the commercials than the show. If I do not want to see them, that mute button works much better than this technology will.

I'm not sure I see what BROUGHT TO YOU BY DR. PEPPER the problem is.

@MFlick: There is a law...but it only applies to "over the air" and even that one isn't enforced.

Old tech. Magnavox had this on their CRT TVs in the 90s as Smartsound. Worked awesome.

[www.magnavox.com]

Dolby Volume looks like it filters with a little more discretion and prejudice. Probably sounds a little better too.

@frigg: MediaPlayerClassic continually "normalizes" the audio, bringing up the volume when the video is quiet, and bringing it down when it's too loud. I don't know if you know it by another name, but both I and MPC call it "Normalize".

Very simple solution:

Turn the idiot box off.

Seriously... Do advertisers make that shit so loud on purpose? I wasn't sure if it was intentional or if they just suck at making commercials. (honestly, do they think we LIKE getting blasted in the ear drums? It just makes me not want to buy their product.)

Next gen magnavox Tech_ Hopefully new and improved_ But who knows_

I'm wondering if this would be really easy to implement in DVRs, which are already encoding the whole stream and can perform this sort of normalization. I skip commercials with my TiVo, but usually can't do it before the blaring first second.

@FreeMan: You, sir, are an arse. There's always some sanctimonious troll offering the sage advice "don't watch TV" or "don't use credit cards". You contribute nothing to the discussion.

@whoster69: I'm smelling a new X-Prize in that idea.

A feature on your TV sounds good, but why pass along the bill for lowering the volume onto consumers when the volumes can be regulated upstream at the distribution point, i.e. cable/satellite? There is no reason in this day and age why TV programming can't be presented at a consistent volume level.

There goes life imitating Science Fiction again. Carl Sagan had a product like that in his book Contact. It was called "Ad-Nix" and did exactly that - identified ads by the volume and either switched channel or muted the volume.

If you want a quick and dirty solution to the commercial issue right now, I was watching the "at home with the Weatherman" documentary on the Negativland DVD. The Weatherman bought a really cheap compressor (go to guitar center and get one for $30) and put it between his cable box and the TV. For him it worked like a charm, killed the loud blast of noise whenever a commercial came on.

There is somethign I've noticed about most TV channels and stations. I think they hire audio people who have no clue what they are doing. A ten years old with a volume knob could do a better job than most TV audio people. Hell look at American Idol, for a music show their mixes suck ass. And what the hell is with movies always being so quiet you have to crank the volume just to hear the dialog. There are thousands of gadgets that could solve these problems at the source, but I guess it costs to much to hire someone who knows what they're doing.

@ChromiumSwitch: I don't know about you, but at 0300 I'm sleeping. I have a hard enough time dragging myself out of bed at 0445.

Would be best if it could detect the difference between the commercial content and the show content (which I think is possible, don't broadcasters encode something in the inaudible range?). That way the show content could be heard as intended by the original sound engineer (most importantly on HD content).

>>>isnt there a law against commercial volumes being louder than content volumes?

I may be wrong, but the way I understand it is that both content and ads are allowed to be at, but not above a certain level. The way broadcasters make the ads appear louder is that they purposely lower the audio on the programming and then boost the level to the legal limit when an advertiser requests (pays for) it. It really sucks to have to keep fiddling with the remote every couple of minutes to keep ads from blasting your ears. I'm glad someone is finally addressing this problem.

@N@tedog: good call, i wondered if everyone had forgotten about SmartSound.

I haven't used my goddamn TV to play audio for a decade. Put this technology into the freaking receivers already people!

If you use the speakers in your TV to listen to the audio, you deserve what you get.

As great as the Smartsound might have been, you had to have a Magnavox to get it, not worth the trade off IMO.

@AvWuff: "Normalizing" is a mixed bag. All normalizing does is bring up the loudest tiny moment (the peak transient) to the loudest audio level possible in a digital system - for example, 0dBFS (0 dB Full Scale). By bringing up the loudest peak, it also brings up everything else as well, so everything gets louder. However, if the peak audio moment is a transient barely noticeable little blip, normalizing doesn't have the intended effect and may have the opposite effect. In other words, if there is a big difference between the loudest peak and the average overall level, even raising the loudest peak to 0 dBFS will still mean that most of the audio material is a good deal softer. It's like a mountain where the very peak juts into the death zone way up in the clouds, but almost every other part of the mountain is almost at sea level.

If you limit the overall dynamic range, through compression and other techniques, there is less of a difference between the loudest transient peak, and the softest part, and most importantly the average overall level. Therefore, if the track is compressed, and then you increase the level, you can increase the average overall level as well. A random spike that might otherwise represent the peak no longer prevents everything from getting louder when "normalized."

It's like