The loudness war - on TV?

[Hercules286]

I'll start by explaining where I'm coming from.

For just about until 3 years ago, all the TV shows I watched were dubbed in Bulgarian. The original soundtrack (with voices) is lowered ~15 dB and then you get the dubs on top of that with fairly soft limiting and a boost in the high midrange to increase intelligibility, since it's a poor country and lots of people have muddy-sounding TVs.

Then, I arrived where I am now, without TV, having to download the shows. While all Anime was mastered rather well, American TV series are AWFUL! You get the ambient sounds SCREAMING at you, very hard compression and no dynamic range whatsoever. I mean none. The other day we were watching Monk, and even my girlfriend noticed how horrible the sound was. I've watched 80s shows and they're nowhere near as bad, and, ambient sounds were kept to a sensible volume.

And what is it with American cinematography and the fetish for super-loud ambient sounds? They're supposed to be AMBIENT, meaning, barely audible and not drawing attention to themselves, and since most of them are fake (not recorded from/during actors' performance) anyway, what am I supposed to gain from hearing them 20 dB higher than normal?

And it's not only American shows, Doctor Who suffers from the exact same things, only since it's British English spoken by a Welsh, you miss half the words.

What the hell went wrong?

[pfrocker]

Ya, I know what you mean. Also I hate that the background sound effects are louder than the conversation. So you have to torture yourself to a higher volume just to hear them.

But what I hate most of all in TV sound is when it goes to commercial and it's actually shouting at you to buy their stuff. Why can't they make the shows and commercials have the same volume?

[Vette Boss]

Today, it seems that advertisements are about 5dB louder than the programme. This is painful when you've got a 600w HT system that doesn't level the volume for you.

The so-called war on the dynamics of sound has to stop.

[Prost264]

^ I used to have to pay attention to when the logo of the channel disappears right before they go to commercial to get ready and turn the volume down.

Now my tv does that for me.

[ahpadt]

What I hate about TV, while watching certain movies, is that in scenes where the actors are speaking in a normal dialogue, you can hear a bloody shit, but when a bomb ignites it's like your head has exploded.

The same goes with commercials. Why does all commercials has to be so bloody loud?

[MXM]

Originally Posted by ahpadt

What I hate about TV, while watching certain movies, is that in scenes where the actors are speaking in a normal dialogue, you can hear a bloody shit, but when a bomb ignites it's like your head has exploded.

But that's good! It means they are using the dynamic range instead of compressing it all into one big mess. So the bomb makes good effect

[geeman]

Originally Posted by ahpadt

What I hate about TV, while watching certain movies, is that in scenes where the actors are speaking in a normal dialogue, you can hear a bloody shit, but when a bomb ignites it's like your head has exploded.

It is supposed to be like that. That's like opposite of loudness, quiet sounds are quiet and loud sounds are loud.

[KaJuN]

I'm jumping on the boat with those of you who hate loud commercials. Here we get it even worse because the local car dealers seem to have a competition going to see who can make the loudest ad with the stupidest and most annoying music. I'm sorry but no matter how loud you shout at me I don't want to buy a Silverado from you at $997 off the suggested retail price. And that god-awful music isn't making me think any more highly of your extended warranty that's included at no extra charge.

[cdbob]

Originally Posted by KaJuN

I'm jumping on the boat with those of you who hate loud commercials. Here we get it even worse because the local car dealers seem to have a competition going to see who can make the loudest ad with the stupidest and most annoying music. I'm sorry but no matter how loud you shout at me I don't want to buy a Silverado from you at $997 off the suggested retail price. And that god-awful music isn't making me think any more highly of your extended warranty that's included at no extra charge.

So True, I too am tired of fucking Kia dealers yelling to buy a piece of shit car, named after some shitty South American City.

[Hercules286]

I think there should be a law saying every TV show, commercial, song released on a single and music album should have an average of some value dB RMS. Radio can have a looser regulation, since most people only listen to radio in their cars.

They can use that for more dynamics, or they can just turn their over-compressed content down.

Now, where's my petition form...

[Karoug]

Originally Posted by MXM

But that's good! It means they are using the dynamic range instead of compressing it all into one big mess. So the bomb makes good effect

But then you can't watch movies when everybody else is asleep..

[MXM]

That is not an exuse to compress sound. Movies shouldn't be watched like that anyway.

Also I have headphones for that

[Buba]

I usually switch over to the ac3 5.1 sound whenever available. Then I simply crank up the center.

[matt2000]

I know what you mean with volume on ad breaks. There's something about some of our cable channels that makes them want FULL VOLUME, but it's not really a big problem.

While I'm here though I'll have a quick moan about the cable box we have. Every time you turn it on, the volume goes down. That gets really annoying over time, constantly having to turn the volume back up every morning.