TV sound volume.

[bpp]

The problem is, we humans perceive loudness based on the average volume, not the maximum volume. People who make commercials take advantage of this by compressing the dynamic range of their audio - making the quiet parts louder and the loud parts quieter - so the average volume of the commercial is as close to the peak volume as possible.

That makes sense. I also find the dynamic range in videos too large sometimes. It is annoying to have to move the volume up during dialogue in order to understand it, and then down during action sequences to avoid waking up a sleeping kid. And I don't have any kind of sound system, just the single speaker built into the TV box. When I rent a video, I often end up having to leave the sound too low to hear much of the dialogue, and rely on the subtitles to fill in the holes.

TV shows, news and documentaries seem to be flatter in range than movies, so not as much of a problem, though the commercials are still too loud.

 

[SC]

That makes sense. I also find the dynamic range in videos too large sometimes. It is annoying to have to move the volume up during dialogue in order to understand it, and then down during action sequences to avoid waking up a sleeping kid. And I don't have any kind of sound system, just the single speaker built into the TV box.

That's a common problem. The dynamic range compression JB mentioned is also called "night viewing" by some A/V receivers or DVD players. It makes the dialog louder and the explosions quieter, so you can understand the words and not wake up the kids/spouse/whatever in the next room. Haven't used it myself but that's the idea behind the feature...

SC

 

[ladelfina]

Just had a REALLY bad instance with this last night with a movie over SKY satellite.. just using the regular stereo speakers of the relatively new TV.

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 5 being "normal" -- i.e., the way you would hear it in real life):

The dialog was 1.5 and sounded like everyone was talking into down pillows.. Doors opening, background foreground music was 8, special effects 10.

There was no way to adjust it overall. Every 30 seconds I was yanking the volume from the lowest end of the scale to the highest and we still missed 1/4 the dialogue.  It was very very unpleasant.

Chalk me up as another person wondering why, if all the technology is better and better, is my user experience worse and worse?

 

[riskadverse]

Well I'm glad to hear (pun intended) that I'm not the only one who thinks that their hearing is fine and current audio engineers do a very crappy job.  It's often hard for me to believe that a univeral problem continues year after year without someone recognizing it, and inventing a decent fix (and becoming rich at the same time).   I'll look into dynamic range compression as a solution.  I've tried some of the other supposed fixes (smart sound; remote wireless headphones; switching to stereo / mono; etc.), but all those solutions were just marginally better or cumbersome.   In the meantime I've become totally dependant on TiVo and closed captions.