4 ms·

In my household growing up the ads were almost always muted as soon as the roll started. I always found it bizarre that other people did not do the same

silverpepsi 3y ago
My grandparents did that, it was one of the principle annoyances I had with visting them as a kid It was very shocking to go from 75dB to an ambient 30dB or something like that out in the countryside. I'd have much preferred to talk over or zone out over the commercials without the suddenly shocking lack of auditory stimulus!
month13 3y ago
They train you to do this when they volume boost the ads to blow your eardrums out.
- lloeki 3y ago
  Over here volume boosting is illegal, so instead they DSP ad audio to maximise envelope across all frequency bands. Since ad sections are your typical break from a program to get to the fridge or toilet or whatever, the DSP transform makes sure you still hear the ads and pick up dialog even when far away from the TV. Downmixing audio so that you can both hear dialogue and not lose eardrums to music and 'splosions seems to be an intractable decades old problem for the movie industry but it sure as hell been solved a dozen times over by the ad biz.
  - bigfudge 3y ago
    If you don’t hugely care about the quality it’s easier. Movies also want to use the dynamic range for effect but they sometimes rely on people have better home audio systems than they actually do.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Yes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Mark...
joosters 3y ago
That always felt counterproductive to me. I knew people who did this and they still stared at the adverts. In fact, without the sound, you are probably focusing more on the ads, trying to figure out what is going on.
- Ntrails 3y ago
  I would agree, the whole point was to enable conversation without the distraction of the ad sounds. If you're gonna watch the damned things anyway I'm not sure it helped

silverpepsi 3y ago

My grandparents did that, it was one of the principle annoyances I had with visting them as a kid It was very shocking to go from 75dB to an ambient 30dB or something like that out in the countryside. I'd have much preferred to talk over or zone out over the commercials without the suddenly shocking lack of auditory stimulus!

month13 3y ago

They train you to do this when they volume boost the ads to blow your eardrums out.

lloeki 3y ago
Over here volume boosting is illegal, so instead they DSP ad audio to maximise envelope across all frequency bands. Since ad sections are your typical break from a program to get to the fridge or toilet or whatever, the DSP transform makes sure you still hear the ads and pick up dialog even when far away from the TV. Downmixing audio so that you can both hear dialogue and not lose eardrums to music and 'splosions seems to be an intractable decades old problem for the movie industry but it sure as hell been solved a dozen times over by the ad biz.
- bigfudge 3y ago
  If you don’t hugely care about the quality it’s easier. Movies also want to use the dynamic range for effect but they sometimes rely on people have better home audio systems than they actually do.
- userbinator 3y ago
  Yes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Mark...

joosters 3y ago

That always felt counterproductive to me. I knew people who did this and they still stared at the adverts. In fact, without the sound, you are probably focusing more on the ads, trying to figure out what is going on.

Ntrails 3y ago
I would agree, the whole point was to enable conversation without the distraction of the ad sounds. If you're gonna watch the damned things anyway I'm not sure it helped