F. Winkerbean

Jay

Are you using a converter box or are these problems occurring on a TV w/ a digital tuner?

Welcome to the forum btw.

Piggie

I happened to me before on analog, but I think you are right, it's worse on digital. One of my local PBS stations I have to turn it full up to get normal audio.

The problem is most likely at the stations end, not your equipment.

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The more I understand, the less I know.

Don_M

You clearly aren't the only one aggravated by this, Funky. From The Wall Street Journal:

Lawmakers Make Noise About Loud Commercials

The story says broadcasters are working on standards and hope to implement them this fall. A lack of standards is, I think, at the bottom of this issue, and it can be approached from two different directions.

On one hand, DTV is a fairly new system, and this is one of a large number of bugs that still need to be worked out. Source materials, from programs to commercials to PSAs to station promos, vary in volume level, and there's no procedure as of yet for making volume levels more uniform. The broadcasters worked out standards for automatic gain controls in analog broadcasts back in the 70s, which IIRC is the last time the FCC clamped down on this.

On the other hand, some stations, knowing the FCC was extremely busy managing the DTV transition, may have cynically decided it was time to play "Wild, Wild West" with something that should have been settled 30 years ago. After all, there was little chance of getting clobbered by a busy regulator, especially since digital broadcasting was considered "experimental" until June 12, right? Well, June 12 came and went three weeks ago, the DTV that was an experiment is now the standard, and full-power analog is almost completely gone.

I'll let you decide which one seems closer to the (ahem) truth. Bottom line: Relief is on the way in one form or another.

DTVuser2009

Can't be as bad as having Descriptive Video Service for visually impaired ruin your viewing of some shows.

I have a tendency to watch a lot of PBS and PBS Kids shows. Nova, Arthur, etc. but a lot of it had that DVS service in the background and NO WAY to TURN IT OFF!

I'd happily take loud/quiet over annoying play-by-play any day.

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TV today is like school uniforms. Everything's the same

F. Winkerbean

Funky is using an old analog TV with converter boxes:
an RCA DTA800 and an Insignia NS-DTX-1. Although I'm
convinced that the varying audio originates at the source.

Geez, circuits for automatic volume control (AVC) and VU
meters (Volume Units) have been around for ages.
Hello, anybody up there at the station monitoring their signals?

I know that there are broadcast standards for all aspects
of DTV transmission. Seems to me that getting the audio
controlled to a uniform level would be the easiest thing of all.

1inxs

I always thought it was broadcast this way on purpose. They would lower the sound for the main programming and when a commercial came on it would blaze aloud. This way when you head to the refrigerator for a beer you can still hear the advertisements.

Orrymain

Commercials have always had a stronger signal. That's been going on for decades. I haven't noticed an audio change on my analog side, but there is one on the cable side, and that's also been going on for years. It's really weird.

My inputs on my main TV are like that, too. For my DVD, I have to turn the sound up dramatically.

Piggie

what I find odd, is both of my TV's have AGC on the audio in analog NTSC but not on ATSC nor any other input. Same with surround sound, only on NTSC.

__________________
The more I understand, the less I know.