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volume differences on TV

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Anyone else tired of constantly adjusting the volume up and down? When there's music or a commercial, it's loud as h***, and then when there's dialog it's time to crank the volume back up bc you can't hear what they are saying. Is there ANY type of device that can be attached to a TV or a home theater system that will level out the decibel levels constant ups and down's?
 
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Heh! It's been that way since the 1950's, and unlikely to change. I know of no device that actually works to keep the levels even. What is done is the sound is compressed in some way so that even though the sine waves don't go much higher, the sound is much more loud. That defeats attempts to limit by limiting the amplitude of the waves. There have been a lot of snake-oil solutions in the 70 years the stations have been doing that.
 

Raz0rEdge

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As Jake said, it's actually designed to be that way.
 
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It's been years ago that the FTC decreed that TV stations could not increase the volume for commercials any more. I noticed the change. But, since commercials have yelling, singing, jingles, etc. they can seem louder than dialog in a program or movie, or even sports commentary.
 
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They get around the regulation limits by compression. If you look on an oscilloscope, the amplitude of the sound waves are within FTC limits, but the compression makes the sound have greater impact, that is, it SOUNDS louder.

Another trick is to lower the volume of the show well inside FTC limits, then push the commercials to the limit. You adjust the volume to hear the lower levels of the show itself, get blasted by the "legal" commercials.

As I said, been that way since the 50's, when it first came to the public attention.
 

Raz0rEdge

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A lot of recent TVs can do some work you if you're using the TV sound (or I imagine if it's being piped over to a soundbar or receiver as well). So check the audio settings and see if there's anything called "Auto Volume" or something.
 

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