How and why is the volume so much louder in video commercials?
In: Technology
I’m glad other people have noticed this and I’m not crazy. It makes me not want to buy their product because it’s so annoying sometimes.
I’m watching TV at my grandma’s trying to be quiet because she’s old so she wakes up at 4 and all of a sudden the TV is like “BUY TIDE PODS!”
Basically, they’re set at a higher volume so you can hear them from another room (like if you were cooking dinner). They want you to hear it because, quite obviously, they want to get you to buy that product.
So you hear it better, plain and simple. Even if you turn down the volume during breaks, the commercial is louder than it would have been.
Professional editors compensate for fluctuating sound levels in the editing room, whether for dialogue, action, etc.. There are decibel ranges appropriate for each. Commercials (and evidently DVD production houses) ignore this.
Source: I’ve worked as on-set audio engineer and in post-production for TV and movies.
All sound is a wave. There are peaks and lows to the wave. The difference between the highest and lowest point in the wave is called dynamic range.
Using something called compression you can reduce the range of the sound. This can bring the lows up higher making the lows sound louder while keeping the peaks where they are.
For advertising, the compression is used very aggressively so it gets your attention more and drives home the message of the ad.
Compression technology has evolved over the years to allow more of it without distortion of the sound, and advertisers have taken advantage of this in a bad way.
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