excuse me how do I get to bigweld enough nevermind [Music] nevermind [Music] your very own name on the windows I just finished painting why didn't you say so I've been more interrupt you while you were talking but just repaint it I just finished painting why didn't you say so I didn't interrupt you while you were talking but just repaint it [Music] you an age-old question that has been asked since the beginning of broadcast television why are the commercials so blasted loud and the answer given by TV station managers and engineers is about the same stock answer given for decades the commercials are no louder than the program material I can prove it to you with a vu meter I will shortly show you what's wrong with that argument in 2012 the calm act became law this was a bill that was proposed by a congresswoman from California to make commercials and promos only as loud as the program sound has it worked no why I would guess the compliance equipment installed in the broadcasters nationwide was designed around flawed wording in the law and or a little manipulation or workarounds by the broadcast industry blend it in with some politics that's usually a recipe for no good they say they are in compliance but the commercials still blast away at us as advertisers explode in our face it's supposed to be about what the human ear perceives that part is not working I'll put together a little study to help you understand the problem and what can be done about it only if it's about the end user and not about just complying to some technical specifications that are flawed enough to allow workarounds I picked a random clip of program material from a local TV station and recorded the audio of the program material in part of an adjacent commercial this is a relatively mild example compared to most of the commercials appearing on TV I left the volume level alone it is untampered and exactly the same relative volume as broadcast so pay attention and you might want to use some headphones for a clearer analysis here is a clip of the program audio one we had over a damp day today across your uncle Tex we're headed for a almost spring-like weekend coming up here's your headlines for the weekend warm and humid this weekend temperatures will be in the 70s all weekend long a hard a far cry from last weekend when it was so cold out there and with the warm weather well we're gonna see a chance of strong to May severe storms this would be Saturday night late Saturday night into early Sunday morning so we'll keep you advised any watches or warnings and then after that a beautiful cool Pleasant Thanksgiving week coming up right now it's 56 degrees in Texarkana 54 in Shreveport Bossier Mansfield 56 degrees 50 now here's a clip from an adjacent commercial with relative loudness to the program material retained Black Friday starts now with the Black Friday blowout only at Mattress plus we're slashing prices on floor models unclaimed lay aways and discontinued models this is your last chance to save up to 60% on the name brand mattresses your dreams queen name brand mattresses blowout price $7.99 King name brand mattresses blowout price $9.99 get interest-free financing on tempur-pedic mattresses and much more don't miss the Black Friday blowout going on now you should always shop mattress blast before you buy now I'm going to play the program audio then the commercial audio with a continuous background sound to demonstrate the relative masking effect of program and commercial audio the background sound is of children playing in a pool the background sound is adjusted to where you can hear it okay during the program material it's to simulate a situation where you adjust TV volume so you can still hear kids outside playing notice when the commercial plays you can no longer hear the children playing in the pool and the TV station is supposedly complying with a calm act yeah one we had all day today across your uncle Tex we're headed for a almost spring-like weekend coming up here's your headlines for the weekend warm and humid this weekend temperatures will be in the 70s all weekend long a hard a far cry from last weekend when it was so cold out there and with the warm weather well we're gonna see a chance of strong to maybe severe storms this would be Saturday night late Saturday night into early Sunday morning so we'll keep you advised any watches or warnings and then after that a beautiful cool Pleasant Thanksgiving week coming up right now it's 56 degrees in Texarkana 54 in Shreveport Bossier manse Ville 56 degrees 50 Black Friday starts now with the Black Friday only at Mattress plus we're slashing prices on floor models unclaimed lay aways and discontinued models this is your last chance to save up to 60% on the name brand mattresses your dreams queen name brand mattresses blowout price $7.99 king name brand mattresses blowout price $9.99 get interest-free financing on tempur-pedic mattresses and much more don't miss the Black Friday blowout going on now you should always shop mattress plus before you buy now I'm going to play you one more comparison of the program material and the commercial this time I'm reducing the commercial volume to where you can hear the background sound of the kids playing so that they are equally audible under the audio of both program and commercial have one we had over damped day to day across your uncle Tex we're headed for a almost spring-like weekend coming up here's your headlines for the weekend warm and humid this weekend temperatures will be in the 70s all weekend long a hard a far cry from last weekend when it was so cold out there and with the warm weather well we're gonna see a chance of strong to maybe severe storms this would be Saturday night late Saturday night into early Sunday morning so we'll keep you advised any watches or warnings and then after that a beautiful cool Pleasant Thanksgiving week coming up right now it's 56 degrees in Texarkana 54 in Shreveport Bossier manse Ville 56 degrees 50 Black Friday starts now with the Black Friday blowout only at Mattress plus we're slashing prices on floor models unclaimed lay aways and discontinued models this is your last chance to save up to 60% on the name brand mattresses your dreams bran mattresses blowout price $7.99 King name brand mattresses blowout price $9.99 get interest-free financing on tempur-pedic mattresses and much more don't miss the Black Friday blowout going on now you should always shop mattress plus before you buy now an advertiser would say that's not fair but in reality it is fair the dirty little secret is not a comparison of the peak volume of each but rather what's below the peak volume the commercial audio has more sound energy than the program audio even though the peak levels are about the same the dynamic range is compressed of where lower dynamics of the commercial sound is now at a higher volume this is done with audio compressors and what is called a brick wall limiter it literally pushes the lower level sound close to the top level with this particular commercial example I also detected some aural exciter treatment which engages the auditory part of the brain to add perceived sound in addition to what is already present in the audio this is known as a psycho acoustic process I'm going to show you some visual examples of what's going on here look at this image this is from the audio timeline of both the program and commercial material the commercial is orange and the program is blue at the top of the image the program material is overlaid to the commercial material notice how the program material has low volume wrists and the commercial material is relentless the orange showing behind the blue represents the additional sound energy that the commercial material forces on the ear in the bottom of the image you will see more closely how the commercial material shouts over the program material even though the peak volume is about the same I will leave this image here for a few more seconds so you can study it a little next I will show you a frequency analysis of both the program material and the commercial audio this image shows a comparison of the frequency content of the program and commercial sound each our five-second average which proved consistent throughout the entire audio clips from left to right represents the frequency spectrum from 20 Hertz to 20,000 Hertz the top edge of the gray area represents the amplitude or volume of audio at that frequency as you can see the commercial contains a higher level of more frequencies than the program audio does that means the commercial audio has even more energy packed into it to illustrate this better here's an overlay of the two the commercial frequency Peaks are in red and the program frequency Peaks are in blue the commercial frequency concentration exceeds the program frequency concentration in most parts of the spectrum extreme volume compression broad frequency concentration and exciter all combined together not only makes it sound much louder but annoying as well all without increasing the peak volume the human ear needs normal dynamics which provide respite from continuous sound energy if motion-picture audio were given this treatment guests would soon begin walking out of the cinema within a couple of minutes the solution is for commercial audio engineers to reduce compression - what typical program material dynamics resemble in addition to keeping the peak vu the same for compliance monitoring equipment needs to respond to sound energy rather than Peaks or average peak what is perplexing is this wild advertisers want to annoy prospective customers in our household and others I'm told when these annoying commercials come on there's a panic to get the remote and mute it as quickly as possible we are not blasting commercials they are blasting us you might want to play that part again where I reduce the volume of the commercial to where it masks out the background sound just as much as the program audio did even though the commercial sounds much quieter you can still hear the voiceover speech clearly advertisers would protein this apparently weak volume though the solution there would be to remove the compression and excessive frequency Peaks then the apparent volume would go back up sound fair I sure think so if advertisers still feel viewers won't pay attention to their commercials if the sound energy is balanced just imagine how many viewers have the sound muted another solution would be to simply have more clever commercials written there are some commercials where I actually turn up the volume for example some commercials for Sonic McDonald's and a few other brands actually have interesting and witty dialogue and they don't have to antagonize their viewers with ear-bleeding torture