– How do tv shows raise the volume in the show and it sounds louder but the tv volume hasn’t increased
In: Technology
They use something which is known as dynamic audio compression. This technique increases the volume of the softer sounds while keeping the loud sounds at the same level. The effect is that everything sounds much louder even though the volume stays the same. Quite a lot of times this creates a comedic effect in music as all the sounds are the same volume making the music sound terribly bad.
There are ways of fixing this though. Instead of measuring the volume of the sound by its loudest peak you can calculate the average volume. This means that you can automatically adjust the level of the sound to make everything sound like the same level. Some TV stations are starting to do this, some are required by law to do this in certain areas. But you are also getting these settings in TVs and other players. This was also a thing with music as well which is why you had so many remastered records about ten years ago and it was basically stopped by audio players like iTunes and Spotify implementing automatic level controls based on loudness instead of volume. And we are seeing similar tendencies for TV as well.
They’re moving “up” within the band of available loudness.
When you’re watching a normal show, you hear quiet sounds and loud sounds without changing TV volume…the audio feed for the show includes both pitch (tone) and volume. The “floor” is obviously zero (silence), the “maximum” is whatever the TV volume setting and your amplifier/speaker setup can do. A TV show can shift all the volumes up and it will all sound louder…as long as they don’t hit your maximum.
This is commonly used during commercials to try to make you pay more attention.
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