Maybe They Won’t Skip Our Commercials If We MAKE THEM LOUDER

Once again, there is an uproar over the “loudness” of commercials versus the loudness of the programs in which those programs reside.

As the keeper of the remote, I have spent a  lifetime hearing “turn that damn thing down” whenever commercials come on.

Here’s the secret: they aren’t louder. Well, technically. TV spots are just as loud as tv shows… at their “peak volume”. The trick is– tv spots are all peak volume…. through a technical audio processing technique called “compression.”

So while 24 has a peak volume of guns being fired and Jack shouting and bombs detonating and stuff blowing up, it also has low peak volume of Jack muttering under his breath, “With all due respect Madam President, ask around.”

Then, a few seconds later, he yells “We don’t have time!!!” at the peak of his lungs.

So TV spots are the equivilant of Jack Bauer yelling “we don’t have time!” for 60 seconds straight.

When I started ouyt many years ago, I didn’t use compression. That’s because even if I knew what it was, I didn’t have any. I had a $6 battery operated mixer from Olsen Electronics, and two tape decks.

If I wanted the soundtrack to sound louder, I mixed the volume louder. This sufficed for many a slide show.

But the first time I did a radio spot, I learned the difference. Despite the brilliance of my creative mixing technique, my spot sounded muddy compared to the other radio spots touting REO SpeedWagon and Styx.

So I asked around, mainly, I asked the pro film guy we had hired a few weeks back. “Buzz,” I said, “Why does my soundtrack sound murky compared to the other radio spots?”

Buzz asked, “What DB compression did you use?”

“Huh?”

Compression seeks out the peaks and valleys in a track and compresses their dynamic range. “S”’s are more syballent, backround noise and music more powerful, and announcers sound like they just grew a new pair of..

compressors.

Luckily, Buzz had joined us to do audio, so I didn’t have to figure out the archane art of compression until years later.

But now whenever I’m asked to turn it down, I begin to explain compression– after I turn it down.