
Why Are TV Ads So Danged Loud? - tomkwok
http://screenrant.com/why-are-tv-ads-so-danged-loud-brusimm-1426/
======
giancarlostoro
I get just annoyed when I watch a movie. I raise up the volume to hear the
actors talking, next thing you know they play really loud music for a scene, I
do mean 2x louder than the actors are talking. I have to watch movies fiddling
with the volume, it's a nuisance. I don't watch TV as much as I used to, but
yeah there's definitely some commercials that are on their highest volume
possible, it's really absurd!

~~~
JonnieCache
That's the result of a 5.1 mix improperly downmixed to stereo.

~~~
erikb
Yeah but why is my TV not able to recognize manually that I use the TV's
default speakers and therefore only have stereo? Would there be a way if I
watch over a Linux under my control, like on a Rasperry?

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Alexqw85
I thought the FCC /does/ regulate the loudness of TV commercials, for a few
years now.

[https://www.fcc.gov/guides/program-background-noise-and-
loud...](https://www.fcc.gov/guides/program-background-noise-and-loud-
commercials)

~~~
brownbat
Yeah, article from ~2008, FCC regulated loud commercials ~2012:
[http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/loud-
commercials](http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/loud-commercials)

I like that HN isn't afraid of older content, but you know, caveat lector.

~~~
Alexqw85
Ahh, thanks for pointing that out; I didn't notice it was an old post. Usually
those have the date (2008) at the end of the title.

~~~
scrollaway
Would be nice to have it added. Mods?

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teekert
We had this all figured out here in the Netherlands, a law prevented this
behavior (which in turn prevents muting during commercial so why the hell they
kept raising the volume no one knows) and it seemed to work. But now we have
made the switch to digital and we are back where we started (I really wonder
why)... Back to hands on the mute button as soon as the logo disappears (which
signals incoming commercial break.)

------
dsr_
(If you know what the difference is between an amplifier and an attenuator,
you should probably skip this comment.)

The point that the article tries to establish (and, IMHO, fails) is that there
are two things going on:

S: The signal that comes in.

V: The perceived volume that reaches your ear after the signal is decoded,
amplified, and transduced by speakers.

S influences V, but so does the volume control on your TV or receiver, the
efficiency of your speakers, and how far away you are. The fact that S and V
are different is what allows your TV station to claim with a straight face
that the perception of sound is not under their control. But they're also
lying, because...

TV stations take content from many sources (local commercials, network
commercials, local programming, network programming) and while they probably
pass the network stuff straight through, they still have to adjust the level
of everything else so that it is not too distractingly different from what the
network feed. Local advertisers will complain vociferously if Billy Bob Auto's
35 seconds of dancing cheerleaders clustered up around old Billy Bob himself
is a smidge quieter than Jesse Ventura's minigun chopping down trees in the
edited-for-TV rerun of Predator that just went to commercial break.

So they run all the sources through compressors, expanders and limiters to get
a more or less equalized top output volume. The sources have all been produced
with this expectation, so we have the exact same loudness war that has been
mentioned on HN recently, only on TV instead of on CD and FM and MP3.

In the end, you get problems at every commercial break where the program has
lots of dynamics and ends on a quiet bit. The "normal" Billy Bob Auto ad
wouldn't sound so loud if it had happened right after the car chase.

------
enraged_camel
My cynical and most likely incorrect theory is that a lot of people use
commercials as an excuse to get up from the couch and go to the kitchen,
bathroom, etc. and the advertisers still want them to be able to hear the
commercial. :P

~~~
wpietri
I think that's a good start, and that we can go further if we get more
cynical.

From the advertiser's perspective, the main point of a TV commercial is to
manipulate you into buying stuff; the show is just bait. We all know from
personal experience that people pay more attention if we suddenly get louder.
Presumably the people who make commercials know that, too. I'm sure some
people even resisted, but once other commercials are loud, you sure don't want
to be the quiet one that people can more easily talk over.

Presumably volume levels will go up until more likely purchasers are put off
by the level than are influenced by the now-heard message; it's only at that
point they'd see a dip in the numbers.

~~~
Retra
Advertising is the main reason I don't watch TV anymore. It just irritates me
too much. (Also, if a website pops up an add, I immediately close the page.)

~~~
_delirium
Same, especially the repetition of pretty cringe-worthy content (stupid jokes
and skits seem to be a mainstay of TV advertising). Many TV ads are just about
bearable the first time, but I cannot stand to see them 5 or 10 or 50 times,
which means that I can't watch TV regularly without becoming irritated about
it.

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visakanv
The same reason why music on the radio is so dang loud– excessive compression.
See: The Loudness War (just 1:54 mins long):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ)

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watmough
Serious people avoid this shit-show by simply not watching commercial
television, except through DVDs or subscription downloads.

~~~
Kliment
Many DVDs still have ads, unskippable "look, here is this super loud 20 second
fade in of the distributor logo" sections and very loud menus. They also have
mandatory unskippable "warnings" about how evil you are and how you are
forbidden from watching the film on an oil platform. The only effective way
around those is ripping and re-recording if you want to play it on anything
but a computer with non-crippled software.

------
snarfy
One of the reasons I like old recordings is because they still cared about the
dynamic range. Accent is a core component of music and is completely lost in
the compressor/expander wars of today. Try listening to something like Patsy
Cline or John Coltrane and then contrast it with something newer and heavily
compressed, like White Zombie. The accents in the older music give it an extra
dimension comparatively.

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pasbesoin
I've noticed TV ads also becoming _visually_ "louder." Not just in the number
and quickness of cuts, but in the deliberate "strobing" of their visual
effects.

Cuts switch between dark and light scenes. Within cuts, there are often
effects that "flash" the screen repeatedly. They are effects that are
ostensibly part of the scene -- not just inserted white frames or the like.
But they are composited to create this very attention-grabbing "strobing".

I started noticing this because I would have the TV on in the background, e.g.
with the mid-day news on while I was at the computer. It was in my peripheral
vision, and I noticed it increasingly grabbing my attention when I was not
interested in the content. Even when muted.

 _Even when muted._

This, I think, is a key point.

People are, when not fast forwarding through, at least muting the commercials.
So... no longer to they "shout" at us; they flash and flicker in attempts to
make sure that we are still -- willingly or not -- paying attention to the
screen.

I've moved on largely to streamed content. Nonetheless, a "mute" feature I
would like would be one that also sets the screen brightness, intensity,
and/or dynamicism to e.g. 50% or somesuch of normal. Enough to see what is on
screen, but to make this "strobing" much less intrusive.

Of course, business models will suppress this ever happening, in the
mainstream commercial sphere. But from a technical perspective, it would be a
nice, simple addition to the product features.

P.S. Once you are aware it is occurring, have a look for this visual gaming.
It then quite stands out.

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microcolonel
They're also fibbing about not having a way to objectively measure and meter
loudness.

It's existed for years as ITU-R BS.1770 in the U.S. (there a very, very
similar recommendation called EBU R128 in the EU).

There are standard methods to meter percieved loudness and output energy,
there is widely available hardware to implement this.

My solution is to not watch live television. Every once in a while I'll buy a
boxed set of a show, or a backup of such a boxed set. I listen to it at the
level of my music, metered with the recommended method from EBU R128.

In addition to the benefit of not being jarred by the loudness contrast, I get
the benefit of being able to actually experience the whole movie or television
show as one continuous feed, usually the way it was intended to be watched.
The audio is also often lossless or close to it, the movies not cut awkwardly,
my audio equipment is better on my personal computer than it is on anyone's
living room.

Don't watch live television; it's expensive, offensively formatted, and
usually not really that good.

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jsz0
It's not just the ads. The shows are louder too. This is in large part due to
the poor quality of speakers in many modern TVs. Same reason for the loudness
war in music. The audio is mastered to sound good on bad speakers. It's more
dramatic / noticeable in ads because you're watching a bunch of spots run
back-to-back in a a relatively short period of time. The content of the ads
are produced to be more attention grabbing and clearly define the start/end of
each spot. IMO trying to regulate something like this is pointless. They'll
just find new ways to be irritating until that model stops working for them.

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legulere
In Germany we're adopting the EBU Recommendation R 128 and don't have the
problem that much anymore.

------
patja
I have watched very few TV ads in the last 10 years or so thanks to the SageTV
DVR software and the Comskip commercial detection and skipping plugin. It
isn't perfect, but it is pretty close.

Despite being acquired by Google, the founder of SageTV recently announced
that SageTV source will be released as open source soon, so we can expect a
healthy future for this great DVR platform!

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imakesnowflakes
Have anyone tried to completely avoid TV ads...I mean, just turn the damn
thing off when the ad starts.

Thinking about that, could we make a thing, which can receive start frames of
commonly appearing ads from a server, which will be dynamically updated, and
when the frames in the transmission match, do a user defined action. Either
turn the TV off or switch channels...

~~~
jclarkcom
Commercial skipping is very doable from a tech perspective, the challenge is
with the business implementation. Some background links:

[http://www.cnet.com/news/directv-sitting-on-tv-commercial-
sk...](http://www.cnet.com/news/directv-sitting-on-tv-commercial-skipping-
technology/)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping)
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/business/media/dish-
networ...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/business/media/dish-networks-
hopper-cuts-ads-and-causes-tremors-at-tv-upfronts.html)

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Dan_in_Brighton
Many cable set-top boxes have "Dolby Volume" as a feature in a hidden sub
menu. It's off by default, as is the feature that prevents your TV from
stretching 4:3 channels across your 16:9 screen.

So this 2008 post is timely for me; just last night I spotted that menu item,
and wondered what it was.

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snarfy
I wonder if this could be solved with two volume knobs - one to raise low
volumes higher, and the other to lower high volumes.

This way the user can change the overall volume and dynamic range, instead of
just the overall volume. The greater the delta between the two, the greater
the dynamic range.

~~~
schismsubv
Perhaps you jest, but if not, what you've described here the general function
of an audio compressor. Compressors are repsonsible for a lot of the lack of
dynamics in modern recorded (and some live) music.

A compressor has a setpoint above which it will only allow volume to increase
at a set ratio (1 dB for every X dB over the threshold), effectively curving
off the peaks. It also usually has a setting for "makeup" gain to raise the
volume floor. There's a lot more to it (knee, attack, release, etc.), but
that's the general gist - they're designed to manage the dynamic range of a
given channel.

~~~
snarfy
True, it is audio compression (or expansion, depending on the settings).

If the audio signal dictates the balance, why have a left and right balance
knob? We have a volume knob, but no way to adjust the compression. We are
letting the audio signal dictate the compression. It should be set by the
user, just like the balance. It could also be a compressor/expander setting,
but IMO musical accent is so core to music that it should be a part of the
volume control.

I doubt any of this would work as the original range is lost after it is
compressed.

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erikb
What I wonder more is why voice consistently is more silent than action. I am
just watching Avengers 1, and I have to scale the sound every two minutes,
because action scenes are too loud and dialogue scenes are too silent. I have
no 5-1 sound system, but I think my modern TV has a Linux inside. It should
have the power to scale accordingly!

*edit: Sorry I haven't read the other comments before. Thus, this is merely a +1 to them. If you want to comment about this topic look at the other discussions. Thanks.

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dmgbrn
I lived with some guys who had a TV that would mute automatically during
commercials. This was about 5 years ago, but I think the TV was older than
that (it wasn't a flat screen).

I assume it took advantage of the fact that commercials have different audio
signal properties (which we perceive as loudness) than regular programming.

I haven't seen a TV that can do this since, although the fact that I only use
my TVs now for streaming and gaming means it's not exactly a feature that I'm
on the lookout for.

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raverbashing
"Published 7 years ago by Bruce Simmons , Updated February 15th, 2014"

Well, today it should be practical to have something that does that, and it
doesn't need to bee too expensive. But you need a way to tap into the audio
channels (so for example, between TV and a cable box)

But it's doable

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free2rhyme214
Or just don't watch TV.

~~~
kleer001
It still blows my mind when I hear about or remember that people still watch
Television. Not just the furniture its self, but the scheduled programming its
self. Whaaa? Do they have no autonomy? Do they have no desire to follow their
own interests?

The only exception I can think of is sports. Cable channels seem to have a
pretty tight reign on live coverage.

~~~
patja
There is a lot of crap out there but on the other hand many consider it to be
a new Golden Age of Television. Granted I think the sans-advertisements HBO
has as much to do with this as its ad-driven counterparts.

Breaking Bad and Mad Men? I think those are examples of great commercial
television.

I think one could easily go without though and probably live a richer life if
you choose a more productive alternate activity in its place. But sometimes
you just want to zone out on some pop drama for an hour.

~~~
tomjen3
I think you and the parent are subtly not talking about quite the same thing.
You advocate good television _shows_ , he is talking about watching television
in front of a television, as controlled by a television station, at their
schedule.

It is quite possible to watch the shows on your terms, when it fits into your
schedule - who is to say that you need to zone out at same time your favourite
show in on air?

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rokhayakebe
Because they know you are off to the bathroom.

Idea: BlockAds/MuteAds for TV.

Idea 2: A DVR like device that delays your entire programming by 5 minutes so
that it automatically wipes out ads.

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def_illiterate
You know what doesn't have loud ads? Good, old-fashioned print books.

I've been meaning to go back to them over a lot of other entertainment media
consumption.

