Making the volume of commercials so loud...

[Flasch186]

...only succeeds in having me hit the mute button thus not hearing them at all. Hello. Just keep it the same damn level as the show, thank you!! :mad:

[JonInMiddleGA]

Actually they aren't louder ... they just sound that way to you (and pretty much all other humans).

It has to do with the techniques of sound compression & other little technical tricks that are used in the production of the many spots.

Here's a little page from Canada (a lot of countries seem to have controversy about this) that explains some of it better than I can.

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/G3.HTM

[cartman]

DirecTV must do something to normalize things, because the commercials don't appear any louder on the stations I watch. But if I'm over at my relatives who have cable, I definitely can hear a difference.

[saldana]

i didnt read the article Jon posted, but in my wife's marketing class, the Professor told them that the volume IS louder intentionally, the intention being the increase in volume gets your attention if you are doing something else during the break, or lets you hear the ads if you go into another room (fridge run)

[wade moore]

i didnt read the article Jon posted, but in my wife's marketing class, the Professor told them that the volume IS louder intentionally, the intention being the increase in volume gets your attention if you are doing something else during the break, or lets you hear the ads if you go into another room (fridge run)

I think I'd believe Jon over some marketing professor..

Without reading the article, I had always heard that it's actually just up an octave. I'll go read the article now ;).

[JonInMiddleGA]

i didnt read the article Jon posted, but in my wife's marketing class, the Professor told them that the volume IS louder intentionally, the intention being the increase in volume gets your attention if you are doing something else during the break, or lets you hear the ads if you go into another room (fridge run)

The prof is effectively correct, but that's sort of a simplified version of it. It isn't actual "louder" per se, but the combination of high compression, an abundance of sounds within many commercials, and the amplification of the sound ranges that humans are most capable of hearing combine to make us perceive them as being louder than the preceeding program.

It's all actually about one (or two) notches more technical than I really am myself, but in a nutshell, they seem louder because we hear more of them but they aren't technically louder as in "turned up to 11".

(dang, that's two Spinal Tap references I've made since lunch)

[Passacaglia]

When we're watching TV, lurker likes to hit mute during commercials, but I find that that makes me constantly watching the TV to make sure I don't miss the program (yeah, we have TiFaux, but we're new with it, so I still worry about missing some of the program, even though we can just rewind it).

[thetrilogy]

Some commercials are CLEARLY louder. It's bullshit and I can't stand it.
Doesn't matter how you compress it.
Example:
Watch HGTV. Those stupid house buying/selling/remodeling shows.
There is a commercial for weight loss that is way too loud. It's the
'4 weeks of food' commercial. If you have kids that are sleeping near
by, you'll understand that it is true about the volume discrepancy.

[Ksyrup]

On a related note, I hate the current trend in sports broadcasts of racheting up the crowd noise and burying the announcers underneath it. Either let me hear the announcers, or drop them entirely out of the sound. Nothing pisses me off more than to have to crank the sound to hear an explanation about something and having to endure extremely loud background crowd noise just to do it. It started with Fox, but pretty much they all do it.

And on the Sunday Ticket, I hate the differing sound levels as I flip from game to game. Pisses me off!

[wade moore]

When we're watching TV, lurker likes to hit mute during commercials, but I find that that makes me constantly watching the TV to make sure I don't miss the program (yeah, we have TiFaux, but we're new with it, so I still worry about missing some of the program, even though we can just rewind it).

So you're one of "them" that we were wondering about in the serial tv show thread, eh?

[Alan T]

I don't know if its intentionally done or not, but I definitly wake up on more than one night to some commercial on USA that is just screaming. I usually fall asleep to whatever Law & Order episodes they have on... but mostly every night at some point, some commercial comes on screaming at me and wakes me to remind me to turn off the tv.

[Draft Dodger]

When we're watching TV, lurker likes to hit mute during commercials, but I find that that makes me constantly watching the TV to make sure I don't miss the program (yeah, we have TiFaux, but we're new with it, so I still worry about missing some of the program, even though we can just rewind it).

I have a friend who does the mute thing, and it makes no sense to me at all.
then again, almost everything I watch is Tivo'd, so I don't see/hear many commercials

[Ksyrup]

There was a recent cell phone commercial that used the mute effect pretty well (something about dropped calls) - I assume there is enough evidence that if the sound goes out on your TV, you'll automatically look up if you weren't paying attention.

[Passacaglia]

So you're one of "them" that we were wondering about in the serial tv show thread, eh?

Yep. I had composed a post in that thread, or at least started to, but didn't submit it. I guess it's just that we don't record that many things, so a lot of times we still end up watching whatever's on at the moment, and not necessarily fast-forwarding. I usually do with football games, though, because I don't want it to take up that much of my time -- an exception is when it's just on while I'm studying.

[spleen1015]

The VCRs that record and leave out the commericals work because of the differing volume between shows and commericials. At least this is what I read in Consumer Reports way back when.

[Desnudo]

Don't they have tvs that level out the sound of commercials? So surely that means they are louder.

[Daimyo]

My impression is that only speech is amplified in commercials. I often watch TV late at night at the loest volume that still allows me to hear the dialogue... when a commercial comes on the dialogue is always significantly louder.

[cuervo72]

Related - what annoys me is switching between NFL games on the network feed and on the Sunday Ticket feed. The local Fox feed especially seems louder (or, clear), the Sunday Ticket (and even CBS) feeds seem really muffled. Hopping between the two and adjusting for the volume difference gets old quick.