About a year ago I wrote a rant about something that has always peeved me, that being the highly variable volume between within TV shows and between TV shows and commercials. The swing in volume can be dramatic and, far too often, demands constant attention to the volume which in turn requires us to keep the remote handy at all times.
But now a solution to the problem may be at hand.
You're watching a show you like, but at times the dialog has very low volume. You can barely hear a word anyone is saying. You turn up the volume on the TV so you can hear the dialog. Then a scene changes or a commercial break comes up and suddenly IT'S THIS LOUD!!That battle has not ended, meaning we spend more time turning the volume up and down to keep it at a reasonable level than we do actually watching the show.
You scramble to turn the volume down to a dull roar. The action scene or commercial break ends and now you can't hear the dialog...again. It's a never ending cycle.
For me it's worse in the late evening when BeezleBub or Deb are trying to get to sleep. I have to stay right on top of the remote to chop back the volume every time it comes booming out of the speakers. It becomes tiresome.
I have a couple of questions for the various TV and cable networks: Why the hell do you jerks do this? Do you really think it makes your shows that much more watchable or your sponsor's commercials more likely to sell their product?
Let me clue you in - It doesn't. All it does is piss us off.
With the state of the art what it is when it comes to sound engineering you'd think the TV and movie folks would be able to keep the difference between the softest and loudest sounds a bit narrower than they do now (that's what's called dynamic range).
But now a solution to the problem may be at hand.
Loud commercials have always been an annoyance to TV viewers, but this is the first time a concerted industry effort has led to a positive outcome.In effect, that means that commercials will no longer be a lot louder than the TV shows the merchants are sponsoring, but only if the bill laying out these requirements, H.R 1084, actually passes in the House. If it passes we won't have to constantly adjust the volume to keep from going deaf!
The work of the experts has been published as "ATSC Recommended Practice A/85: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television." You can download this document for free at www.atsc.org.
In concept, it's simple. Measure the loudness of a typical segment of dialogue in a program and assign that value as the dialnorm of the program. Measure the average loudness across an entire commercial and assign that as the dialnorm value of the commercial. When you insert the commercial (which is now a digital file) into the program, if the dialnorm value of the commercial is not equal to the dialnorm of the program, apply an overall gain correction to modify the commercial's dialnorm value to make it equal to that of the program.
Good points made above as to the time spent fiddling with the TV's volume control so the kids and wide can sleep. But there's much more at stake in this TV volume practice. Sudden bursts in audio tend to "trigger" neurobehavioral and medical sequela in persons with neurological disorders and brain injury. The actual medical sequela is actually termed, "sensory integration disorder (or dysfunction)," (also termed SID))and it affects perhaps 20-25% of the population to varying degrees.
As a neuroscientist and survivor of a 1992 brain injury and CNS shunt (x 7 revisions) I know all too well of the ill effects of living with SID. When SID complaints are triggered by sudden loud sounds, substantial (unsyncopated) room noise, jack hammers, and bright and unusual visual stimuli to name a few, the affected person can experience headache, sudden cognitive decline, dizziness, and sudden behavioral changes. For sufferers of autism, ADHD, PTSD, TBI, migraine disorder, hydrocephalus, and a host of others, containing SID is a daily battle. You certainly don't need your own TV triggering it!
Of interest to SID and the escalating use of audio and video today, I believe that any corrective technologies to this end to minimize triggers would be viewed as "assistive devices," and covered by some government agencies and/or reimbursable by insurance. There is both a health/disability factor at issue, as well as, an accessibility to viewing TV. It makes to sense to purposefully make viewers ill and/or irritable in watching TV, when you're also paying good money to a cable or satellite provider. In effect, you're paying them to make you ill. Might also make an interesting personal injury legal argument.
Let's all look forward to progress in technology, health, and wellness in 2010.
Stephen