Very Loud Commercials on 58-1

[Stanley Kritzik]

58-1, as received over-the-air is still in the nasty habit of running its audio for the commercials much louder than the programming.  This is plain vanilla reception O-T-A, without cable or satellite modification in-between.

It would be very viewer-friendly if they would hold all the audio at the same level.

Stan

[William]

I've always found WDJT content in general to be overly loud, especially their Sunday football.  It's almost night and day compared to the level I get from WITI.  More of a nuisance than anything.

--- William

[StarvingForHDTV]

I've always found WDJT content in general to be overly loud, especially their Sunday football.  It's almost night and day compared to the level I get from WITI.  More of a nuisance than anything.

I agree, it is annoying.

[tencom]

Perhaps their Audio Limiter is not set-up correctly after all human hearing has an audable audio hearing range about  140 Db. which means is if the softest sound that human hearing can perceive is set at level 1 the loudest sound that could be   heard safely would be at a level of 100000000000000 when compared to, level 1
TV and radio stations use automated equipment and careful level controls to keep audio levels at or near  constant  levels   but not always easy to do because of the large dynamic range that audio has. Their is a huge volume level difference between  a pin drop and a thunderstorm.

[Danno321]

Audio for commercials is compressed dynamically and then pushed to the top of the band so it appears loader and gets your attention (well that is the intention).  Many new artists do this with their new releases because of the iPod crowd (e.g. Bruce Springsteen).

[Nels Harvey]

Now that analog TV is pretty much gone, we are receiving audio digitally.  In analog transmitters, there were specific limits to the permitted deviation of the audio signal.  This sort of kept the audio somewhere in bounds.

Digital audio doesn't modulate a transmitter with the same measure of deviation.  Instead, it is made up of digital words that do not change how they modulate a transmitter based on loudness.  There is a lot of concern for this problem nationwide, according to what I have read, and the solutions are difficult to determine.

That being said, isn't it possible to simply have the responsible engineers compare audio levels between all local channels and adjust their audio outputs to fall in line with the majority of other signals?