Congress: Would you please turn that TV ad down!

[Lester]

Couch potatoes rejoice: Congress takes up bill to level off spikes in TV ad volume
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Television viewers jarred by abrupt spikes in volume during commercial breaks may someday be able to give their mute buttons a rest.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Congress- ... l?x=0&.v=2

[AmpedNow]

Yea.

I can overlook an occasional audio spike, but there are a lot of habitual offenders. *cough* Suddenlink *cough*

[Hoosier Daddy]

I can overlook an occasional audio spike, but there are a lot of habitual offenders. *cough* Suddenlink *cough*

Time Warner isn't much better.
I always thought it was just an amateurish attempt to superimpose local commercials via the cable system,
rather than any purposeful, intentional attempt to air the spot at a higher volume.

[Big Media]

I always thought it was just an amateurish attempt to superimpose local commercials via the cable system,
rather than any purposeful, intentional attempt to air the spot at a higher volume.

Actually, I think you may be correct. Still, this is nothing a $200 limiter can't solve.

[Dave Loudin]

A $200 limiter won't fix regular programming at -25dB and spots at +3dB.

[sportsvoice]

I can overlook an occasional audio spike, but there are a lot of habitual offenders. *cough* Suddenlink *cough*

Time Warner isn't much better.
I always thought it was just an amateurish attempt to superimpose local commercials via the cable system,
rather than any purposeful, intentional attempt to air the spot at a higher volume.

Time Warner sucks here too. Nothing like loud local spots, the same annoying pushes for overpriced VoIP service, and overloaded breaks that cut off 30 seconds of the show I was trying to watch.

Now that I have Dish, I've noticed they seem to get everything at mostly the same volume.

[Hoosier Daddy]

... the same annoying pushes for overpriced VoIP service ...

Time Warner VoIP is very overpriced for what you get. In some cases, more expensive than traditional Verizon landline.
Nationwide long distance is great if you make hundreds of dollars of long distance calls everywhere.
It's a ripoff if most of your calls are local or in one or two area codes.
Most people could do a lot better with a 3rd party LD carrier like OPEX or Global Crossing.
Or just using their cell phone.

The only benefit T/W can offer over traditional VoIP services is that they only use the cable wire.
The telephone voice and data packets are technically not part of your internet service and bandwidth.
The other guys use your internet to send the voice and data.

Dollar for dollar, and feature for feature ... Vonage is still the way to go if you want VoIP.
$18 bucks for 500 minutes of local and long distance to anywhere. $25 a month for unlimited time.
A separate FAX line for an additional $9 an month.
A second voice line anywhere Vonage has a local telephone number available for just $5
A nationwide toll-free number added on for an additional $5 a month.
Pretty damn sweet.

[jag]

Perhaps I'm just being a bit curmudgeonly, but I must wonder if this is a situation that is so compellingly serious that it requires the US Congress' attention. Annoying? Sure. Problematic? Well, has anybody's hearing really been compromised by loud commercials?

[Mike]

This is something I'd actually like to see happen. It's also a problem on radio as well.

Of course, I know enough about radio engineering and audio to know that commercials aren't actually at a higher "volume" than the show, because the FCC limits FM, AM, and TV stations to the bandwidth of the channel they are allocated, which limits the audio response. The secret to increasing loudness, is of course, compression, meaning "silent" spots are eliminated and replaced with noise. I personally hate compression on FM stations, music sounds horrible when overcompressed, but it's been a practice for many years for stations to overcompress to sound "louder" than the competition.

FYI, here is how commercials are made "louder": The program/music, whatever you are listening to on radio, or watching on TV has a natural flow of audio level. There are peaks, and there are silent or low spots.

Commercials don't do that. They have no silence, they fill every second with sound, by design, and by compressing the audio so they can increase loudness. Commercials aren't natural, and aren't designed to be subtle, they are designed to get your attention (which makes people more resistant to them, fyi). This is why commercials seem louder, even though their peak volume levels cannot and do not exceed the peaks in the programming.

The way to sensibly regulate this would be to define technical standards for audio compression.