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Comment by eastbound | Hacker News Reader

It’s funny because broadcasters have notmalized ads at +6 dB compared to the rest of the radio.

It’s actually measured in LUFS, and it’s normalized worldwide for radio, podcasts, TV, movies, and commercials, so that commercials are louder.

LUFS measures the loudness, which is not exactly the same as volume - it makes quiet moments louder so that everything can be heard while the car engine runs, but the drawback is limited dynamic range, which is not important on podcasts but a little more important in music.

It’s double-funny that we can normalize LUFS and we’re still stuck with movie dialogs inaudible and the sound effects earth-shattering. I wish VLC had a better loudness processor, I don’t succeed to configure it to keep the whole movie at the same volume, whether they’re speaking or using automatic guns.

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> I wish VLC had a better loudness processor, I don’t succeed to configure it to keep the whole movie at the same volume, whether they’re speaking or using automatic guns.

Probably won’t help you if you’re using VLC, but most of the streaming services now have multiple audio tracks in the same menu that would switch to another language called “<Language> - Reduce loud noises” which is pretty much that. I just find it inconvenient as an apartment dweller that the default is to blast the volume during any action sequence.

> It’s funny because broadcasters have normalized ads at +6 dB compared to the rest of the radio.

In the US, the loudness rule was made by politicians who had no technical background.

What they came up with was that the loudest part of the commercial can not be louder than the loudest part of the program surrounding it.

Broadcasters were quick to compress and limit the commercial audio into a brick, and normalize it just below the "100%" of the programming. The end result was a much, much louder commercial, that was technically a lower peak volume (but much higher average volume).

The law to lower the peak volume permits a higher average volume, and that has been exploited.

>It’s funny because broadcasters have notmalized ads at +6 dB compared to the rest of the radio.

This has actually be regulated against by the FCC. While the FCC is pretty much a feckless shell of an org, there are rules and ways to make complaints for their violations[0]

[0]https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/loud-commercials-tv

Would something like the OP linked script be possible for Netflix (and the like)? I hate that the audio is so much quieter than the effects, and it feels insane that this isn't configurable, either at the hardware level (TV) or software level, let alone a scripted hack.

edit: maybe this "Reduced Loud Noises" language option https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991712, and also apparently changing from 5.1 to stereo

Here's a great post from a post-production audio mixer explaining the many convoluted steps that go into delivering a final mix with correct loudness specs to end users. tldr, there's a lot of room for error.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AudioPost/comments/y2m1u0/comment/i...

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