• Coffee House
  • Here's a random thought about how music is over compressed yet other media....
2013/12/31 02:46:22
ChuckC
I am all for preserving the enjoyable and powerful dynamics in music so, where the loudness war comes into play I am standing with the audiophiles.  The K meters are basically set up and designed to gauge and generally Movies have the most dynamic movement (always seemed a little skewed to me anyway because they are the longest medium,  there are bound to be plenty of quiet scenes over the coarse of 2 hrs to balance the RMS & crest factor.)  and then TV & broadcast have less but still a high amount of dynamic range.   Soooo as I sit here watching TV in my living room because I can't sleep for example I am irritated by this much movement!  I have to turn the damn set up for the quiet dialog then keep the remote in hand because the action scenes will wake the wife and kids, then the commercials are even louder than that.
I have though on many occasions that I really want to put a compressor between my tv's output and some speakers so I could control these dynamics myself and keep them under control.   the dynamics are cool in the theatre but once it is out on dvd or on TV my vote would be to squash all TV programing *including commercials* down to somewhere in the 6-12 db of movement.  So then the bomb blast in a movie would only be Max 12 db louder than the softest dialog.    Just my thought on it but the random volume throws piss me off.  I have been a live rock musician for 20+ years & want the TV loud enough to hear the quiet parts which prompt my wife (who has bionic hearing.... without glasses, she's blind, but she can hear a gnat fart at 50 yards) to constantly ask why the hell I have it up so loud.
2013/12/31 07:29:56
paulo
I know what you mean about the ads on TV - way louder than the programmes and I always have to reach for the volume control when they come on. I often wonder why the advertisers/broadcasters don't realise that their ploy to try and make you sit up and pay attention to the ads actually backfires on them because of this. It's like a form of shouting, and who ever listens to random people shouting at them ? HEY YOU ! YES YOU, THE PERSON I'M REALLY ANNOYING BY TALKING WAY LOUDER THAN NECESSARY, BUY THIS THING FROM ME..............let me just think about that........ erm, no. Once I'm forced to reach for the remote I actually turn the volume down way lower than it would have been had they just been broadcast at the same level as the progs. When the ads are over I turn the volume back up to normal level.
2013/12/31 08:20:11
SteveStrummerUK
 
I agree, the adverts are ridiculously loud compared to the programmes they ruin. I stick mostly to the BBC so the problem doesn't affect me too much*, but I have noticed that of all the commercial stations I watch, the ads on Ch4HD seem to be by far the loudest.
 
I have a work-round solution to the problem (and of ads in general) when I'm watching a film on one of the commercial channels. My Freeview HD box has a 'pause live TV' feature, so what I do in advance is, depending on the length of the movie, I estimate how many ad breaks it will occur. Allowing around 4 minutes for each ad break, I pause the film at the beginning for the appropriate amount of time before letting it run. I have my digibox set up so the skip feature jumps 4 minutes so each time the ads appear I just skip through them. The end result being that the film will finish at roughly the right time.
 
LOL that's pretty sad really, but it does avoid having to fart about with the volume controls, plus it means the film flows much better.
 
 
* Mind you, in as much as the BBC is purportedly ad-free, we still have to put up with endless trailers and other 'ads' between each show. At least they have the decency not to whack the volume up for them tough.
2013/12/31 08:25:20
Moshkiae
Hi,
Film, and theater, in the past 50 years has been huge about the other parts of it, that also add to the atmosphere and general ambience of the whole thing.
 
Because of it, for example, everyone has seen the incredible sets that Beyruth used to have with their amazing lighting designs that every rock band throws on the musicians haphazardly. Or you have seen how music can be used to jump off your seat, and all you had to do a few years back is go see "2001, A Space Odyssey" at the Cinerama Dome, or equivalent, and then later a pair of movies were unreal and incredible when it came to sound and effects in terms of getting your attention. Both "Apocalypse Now" and "The Deerhunter" had you totally shook up by the way some of these effects and sounds were used, and it wasn't only the helicopter going from left to right, that even Pink Floyd used more than once!
 
In my early days with thie stuff, we did have a friend that was blind and he was nutz and then some. He would hear something on the radio on Sunday night, and Monday morning stick his cane out on 101 and hitchhike to Van Nuys and go to the record shop to get one of those new things, and then hitchhike back ... no biggie for him. Or we would be at his place, and he loved joking about us always needing some lights and blow up his electrical bill. But his listening attention was, indeed, deadly, not to mention his tactile sensations.
 
Is it that we're lazy and do not pay attention to what's around us?
 
Or is it simply "too much" that we can not "register" it all?
 
My thoughts have always been along the side of the middle of this equation. Meditation has a way to help focus your hearing as well, with the side effect that you endup having to deal with the over-abundance of "information" that you all of a sudden get, but can not make sense of ------ HAHAHA ----- there is the problem right there.
We always think that we have to "know" and "understand" everything, including why we sleep and why the water goes down the faucet and why babies cry, and why you need to get off once in a while ... and we're not simply capable of "letting go" that mental state that has to define everything, until it kills it, and has no idea what it is anymore.
 
It is the same with most music and artists. To me, an artist, continues t evolve and get more into these areas, whereas the Rolling Stones will just look for another riff for a song, and that's that. Some folks think there is just as much "art" in the nothingness of it all as there is in the fullness of it all.
 
It is what it is. This is what life and living is all about. Questioning it becomes an exercise in futility, and in fact, an old wise man used to say something like ... the day you do not have a question, is the day you "Know"!
2013/12/31 08:43:58
ChuckC
Strummy,  I am with ya.  It ticks me the hell off.  I just got a new soundbar for my TV with an integrated sub... if a company made one with a cheap hardware limiter on it, I would be all over that thing like flies on Sh*t!
 
Moshkiae- I followed the 1st sentence or two & I realize that it adds ambience, mood, tempo to a movie...  and if the kids are out for the night and my wife and I want to crank up the surround sound and watch a horror film or war movie it's cool.  But if it's 3 am I don't want that at all.  That's why I think installing a user-selectable limiter or hard compressor is the course of action.   After the 1st couple lines ya got all philosophical on me and I lost wherever you were trying to go.  Yes we want to understand things.... but I am not pondering the meaning of life here, just why are the sound effects and commercials comparatively so F*$king loud?!  haha it's not that deep man.
2013/12/31 08:51:37
paulo

2013/12/31 09:01:14
jamesg1213
Since I got a surround sound system I've noticed that certain TV channels are much louder than others, adverts or not; 'Channel 4' and 'More4' for example are booming compared to BBC.
 
ChuckC
 
 
Moshkiae-   After the 1st couple lines ya got all philosophical on me and I lost wherever you were trying to go.  Yes we want to understand things.... but I am not pondering the meaning of life here, just why are the sound effects and commercials comparatively so F*$king loud?!  haha it's not that deep man.




You're not alone there Chuck..
2013/12/31 09:07:38
jamesg1213
paulo





 
Can I borrow that for the Songs forum Paulo? Thanks..
2013/12/31 09:41:27
paulo
SteveStrummerUK
 
 
 
* Mind you, in as much as the BBC is purportedly ad-free, we still have to put up with endless trailers and other 'ads' between each show. At least they have the decency not to whack the volume up for them tough.



If you ever watch MOTD they do that during the programme .Pisses me off no end. I've tuned it to watch football. Show me the football. If you want to point out your coverage of other non-football sporting events by all means feel free to tell me about this afterwards if you must, but not in the middle of and at the time spent covering what I am supposed to be seeing. Bad enough that they now seem to spend more time talking about each game than they actually show of them without breaking into things that are totally unrelated
2013/12/31 09:45:44
paulo
jamesg1213
paulo





 
Can I borrow that for the Songs forum Paulo? Thanks..




Borrow away, wasn't mine in the first place.;)
 
The SF hasn't been what it was for some time now. Shame really.
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