US Bans Loud Commercials 289
bs0d3 writes "On Tuesday, the FCC passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM. It's a law that states all commercials must run at the same volume as network newscasts. The same applies to network promos. The responsibility falls on cable providers like Comcast or charter. The law will not take effect until next year which leaves it plenty of time to be challenged in court by cable providers or advertisers."
How loud is that? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with ads is that they, like top 40 music, are much more heavily compressed than movies or newstalk. The maximum amplitude isn't any higher though. So what measure of "loudness" is it going to be? Because if it's amplitude, then this law will do precisely nothing.
Re:Pretty late for this, don't you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about time. When TVs and amplifiers come with anti-blasting correction you know it's pretty bad.
Actually, I wonder how that'll affect mythtv's commercial detection? I know it uses audio as one of its inputs...
Commercials, yes.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sirius has become as bad as broadcast radio in adopting the same sh_tty BOOM, WHOOSH & BAM intros to commercials. Who, besides 5 year-olds is impressed with this junk, anyway? I listen to a radio show and then BOOOM <sunday sunday sunday-guy voice>You're listening to ___ on Sirius __(channel name)__</sunday sunday sunday-guy voice> It would be great of FCC insists those stupid things were toned down as well.
Re:How loud is that? (Score:2, Interesting)
And making the cable provider responsible may be the right thing for local avail ads (ads the cable company inserts into network feeds), but how are they supposed to monitor and control network-sourced ads?
Re:Washington's got nothing better to do? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because sometimes, especially while listening to a quiet movie, you PREFER NOT TO BE SUDDENLY BLASTED WITH NOISE!!
It's annoying as hell. I do kind of agree with you though that it doesn't seem like something the government needs to regulate. But, hey, at least it isn't something actually evil (*ahem* SOPA). And yes, it's a bit sad that I'm glad just because something the government does isn't completely wrong.
What's so amazing about this is I have a MAD Magazine reprint parodying thise from about 1960 - Someone's watching a late night feature and can hardly hear the sound 'ah help your killing me. aaagh.' suddenly, TICK TOCK TICK TOCK ARE YOU HAVING TROUBLE GETTING TO SLEEP!! and neighbors all yelling out their windows to turn the noise down. Wow. About 51 years since that bit in the magazine. Glaciers move faster.
Re:Washington's got nothing better to do? (Score:5, Interesting)
From our perspective, because we agree with what they're trying to accomplish. I don't agree with the means, though, which makes it very bad legislation.
Just because YOU do not agree with the means does not make it bad legislation.
We have government for precisely this reason, to restore some semblance of a balance of power between the individual consumer and the corporate giants who feel free to subject you to anything they think they can make you swallow. They are using our airwaves, and our TV sets, to say nothing about our eyeballs, they should follow our rules.
Your position seems to be you always have the right to turn it off, and any abuse you get is of your own choice. I'm not willing to make that choice. Why should I? What kind of freedom is that? The choice to take it or leave it? Screw that. They can operate by our rules, or operate not at all. Let them take it or leave it for a while. They've had their way for 30 years.
Average?! The average of 1,1,1,1,50 is 5.4 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
There already was a standard requiring commercials to limit loudness. A commercial could not be louder than the program it was accompanying, which meant it could not be louder than the loudest point in the programming. What that meant is if there was a single gunshot in an hour, your commercials in that hour could be very, very loud. Also, loudness was not weighted. High-pitched ringing and speaking at the same level were considered equally loud, even though human hearing is skewed (A-weighting) to perceive speech as inherently louder.
So what this really does is 1) re-define what constitutes "loud", and 2) give the process some teeth.
Not really. It keys on the average volume of a commercial needing to be the average volume of the show. We don't want averages, we want ReplayGain [wikipedia.org].
Averages can be gamed quite trivially. Think of a thirty second ad in which the first 25 seconds contain very soft speaking with bits of silence between lines. The CALM Act affords the rest of the ad the luxury of BLASTING the product's tag line at well over the current maximum volume level.
Normalize is junk, what you need is Replay Gain. (Score:4, Interesting)
Normalize is junk and it doesn't do what you think it does. What you need is Replay Gain [wikipedia.org], or dynamic compression if you don't care about dynamics (ie, speech).
Take a music sample from a cd that sounds low (ie from the 90ies).
Make a copy of said sample and add a peak noise somewhere (the kind you hear when you unplug/plug your analog line in).
Make another copy and apply heavy dynamic compression.
Normalize all three. Puzzled? The first sample sounds loud, the second sounds much lower, but the third one sounds the loudest. That's why normalizing is useless, and you need something else.