http://www.streetlightsound.com/audio-cable-differences/
FCC: Keep TV commercials same volume as programs (KSAT)
Television commercials that are a lot louder than the program will be
prohibited under rules adopted Tuesday by the Federal Communications
Commission. “Under our new rules, TV providers must ensure that the average
loudness of commercials will be no higher than the average volume of the
programming they accompany,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski after a vote
to approve the proposal. It may take a while to get people out of the habit of
hitting the mute button on the remote control, since the rules limiting spikes
in volume don’t take effect for a year. The transition is designed to allow
programmers to find ways to smooth differences in audio level, through
automatic volume control or re-recording commercials that would fail the
loudness test. The agency chief said “the Commission has received almost 6,000
complaints about loud commercials since 2008,” but it took congressional
legislation to grant the FCC the authority to act on the problem. That
authority was contained in the Commercial Advertisement Mitigation or CALM
Act, authored by California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo. She issued a statement
Tuesday saying, “TV stations now have the responsibility to turn down the
volume on excessively loud commercials, …