QUESTION: Is there a question that gets sent to your newspaper column more than any other?

SCOTT BRUNNER
Brentwood

ANSWER: Yes, and it came to mind immediately when you asked. I receive a tremendous amount of inquiries regarding television audio. Readers complain that dialogue is hard to understand and when the commercials come on they are much too loud, far louder than the program's volume.

As I see it, there are two reasons for dialogue that is hard to understand. The first is the way the programs are recorded. "Dynamic range" is the difference between the softest and loudest sounds in recorded audio, be it music, a movie or a television show.

Modern audio recordings have a lot of dynamic range, and a DVD or Blu-ray disc has audio recorded with dynamic range comparable to the presentation in a movie theater. When the average home user turns up the volume to the point where the loudest parts aren't too loud for them, the dialogue is too soft as it is recorded at a much lower level. This has an effect on the commercial volume as well.

The second is the transition to flat panel televisions. In the days of tube and projection TVs, the television had one or more speakers of decent size pointing directly at the viewer. Almost all flat panels now have perfectly smooth front bezels with tiny speakers facing downwards or to the sides, a much poorer arrangement if you want acceptable sound. I don't seem to get dialogue complaints from readers who have a sound system of some kind connected to the television, though the problems with commercial volume remain.

Why are the commercials so loud? Theoretically, they can't play louder than the program itself. The maximum volume of the commercial recording is the same as the television recording, meaning the commercial can't play any louder than the loudest explosion in an action movie. However, commercials are recorded at a much higher average volume, effectively turning up the volume of your TV dramatically. When you turn up the TV to hear the dialogue, the commercials can startle you when they come on.

The cable and terrestrial broadcasters know what is going on as advertisers toy with the average volume levels, and surely have the means to correct it by equalizing and adjusting it before broadcast. Why they don't do this on their own is beyond me, other than not wanting to offend their advertising customers. I would think you wouldn't want to annoy people you are trying to attract as customers by making their TV watching miserable, but the practice remains.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Last year, Congress passed the Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM. The Federal Communications Commission has until Dec. 15, to come up with rules to regulate commercial volume and must start enforcing them by Dec. 15, 2012.

In the meantime, you can check your television, disc player or audio receiver for a setting called Dynamic Range Control, DRC, or Midnight Mode. This will compress the dynamic range and make dialogue a bit more understandable while matching the volume of the commercials a bit closer to the program material. This will mostly help the dialogue and won't help much with the commercials.