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Termyn8or -> RE: Quieter TV commercials (12/19/2009 8:52:57 PM)
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Ahem. Using FR.
The content on TV usually has a wide dynamic range, that is it gets loud and soft. This preserves the impact for enthusiasts everywhere, but causes problems for those who like to watch TV in the middle of the night. Many times they have to turn up the volume to hear the dialogue and then a car or building blows up or something, and if they happen to be hooked up to a 400 watt sound system it can wake the neighborhood.
This has been countered by some TV manufacturers by incorporating a feature called "level sound" or "smart sound" or whatever. What it boils down to is an audio compressor. A compressor in this sense makes the loud sounds softer and the soft sounds louder.
The debate over whether commercials are really louder or not has been going on for decades. Their sneaky asses get out of it by using peak level meters and pointing out that the ad reads no higher than the peaks of the program. While this is true, a true RMS reading of the level would prove them wrong because what they do is "upcompress" the sound. You see it can only get so loud. When it hits 100% modulation that is it. In the analog days it was highly illegal to overmodulate, but now in the digital age it doesn't matter much, except that the distortion is unacceptable.
By upcompression I mean that everything is brought up as close as possible to 100% modulation. That is what is done on FM radio in the US, and it is actually required by law, although some stations get away with breaking that particular regulation, especially if they broadcast alot of classical music. But you can still tell. On Rock and roll or good hillbilly you can easily tell the difference between the radio and a CD for example. The beat of the drum, the attack of a stringed instrument, and the crescenda of a piece of music is slightly muted of course. But all in all the music loses it's impact. The dynamic range is gone and is very hard to recreate.
Compression on the sending side and expansion on the recieving side has alway been a part of audio technology and is actually used, in a form called DBX. With certain media it runs the pants off Dolby C but is not entirely suited to tape recording. It is more suited to radio broadcasting and other media which does not alter the frequency response like tape does. Dolby was specifically develped for tape, at least Dolby B and forward from there. Dolby A was first and was used for all sorts of media, but was extremely tricky to calibrate properly. Dolby B was not so bad. When tape recording technoogy got better Dolby C came out, which is pretty close to having two Dolby B units in tandem. However Dolby only works on the high frequencies. It is mainly to reduce tape hiss. (apparent tape hiss)
DBX, or any compression/expansion scheme mainly works on the entire audio spectrum. It still does the same thing - drown out the noise in the medium. For a time they were selling expander only units to audiophiles to try to restore the dynamic range to the material. I have had and used such units and if used and calibrated properly can do wonders for the sound. It can make highly compressed FM sound like a really good tape. It can make a tape sound as good as a good LP and it can make an LP sound like a CD or other high quality digital medium.
It is all still an illusion though, but then so is the sound. Pioneer used to claim to "bring it back alive" but that was just hawking. Believe me, I know more about audio than the people who design this shit. It is still a reproduction, unless you got the band in your livingroom. The essense of the industry for decades was to reproduce the sound as accurately as possible and over the years billions of dollars have been spent to that end. The ability to make a sound seem louder is just a byproduct of this technology.
Years ago I put together a system that was a bit unique. The commercials were actually quieter than the program. I accomplished this by equalizing the audio before it went into the compressor. When I watched TV most of what I watched was not sensational, so the audio spectrum was not fully used most of the time. By boosting the highs and lows before compression it worked very well, since the commercials are always new, and have a tendency to use more of the frequency range than most programs.
I have thought of designing and marketing a product that does just that, any takers ? (yes I can design it quite easily)
T
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