[secret-noun]

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

> a video streaming service that serves consumers residing in the state shall not transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany

I was hoping we'd find a more precise definition. Couldn't this be gamed by editing a short (1 second, for example) segment of the intended content to have loud audio to artificially set the upper bound?

[potamic]

It does mention compliance with the CALM act, which lays out the precise methodology by which loudness will be measured [1]

> The Calm Act refers to A/85, and A/85:2013 specifies BS.1770 (specifically referencing BS.1770-1) as the source of its loudness measurement techniques (1770-2 did not exist at the time A/85 was finalized). So BS.1770-1 currently serves as the yardstick by which U.S. television programming will be evaluated for CALM Act compliance.

> BS.1770 recommends the Leq(RLB) measurement algorithm, where Leq(W) the frequency weighted sound level measure, xw is the signal at the output of the weighting filter, xRef is the reference level, and T is the length of the audio sequence.

> The drawback of BS.1770 as originally conceived is that it measures average loudness over the entire length of content. This may be fine if the loudness is fairly consistent over time. If not, a quiet section of content may, as illustrated in Figure 5, bias the average level so that it measures as acceptable despite having some sections that are unacceptably loud.

[1] https://www.telestream.net/pdfs/whitepapers/wp-calm-act-comp...

[tchalla]

Off topic but I spot another one of those forcibly made acronyms

> Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act of 2010

[namibj]

Sounds like political ones are exempt?

[spike021]

i've noticed this with amazon prime in particular it's got to be at least 25% louder than the actual content i'm watching.

[nullify88]

YouTube does this too. We immediately fetch the remote and mute the damn thing. And I'm contemplating finding something that auto mutes for me.

[smoghat]

For us, even regular YouTube is substantially louder than any streamer. If we want to watch something on YT than go back to Hulu/Netflix, we always have to adjust the volume. I don’t get it, why, why?

[fwip]

Louder content is more compelling (to a point), so I'd imagine that louder content helps boost watchtime, which is what both Youtube and the video creators are optimizing for. The music industry's "loudness war" seems related.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[spike021]

that's odd to me because a lot of the time I've found that regular YouTube content is on the quieter side to other services.

[anigbrowl]

It's already spelled out in more detail in the FCC guidance which the legislation incorporates by reference. Backing down the private right of action is bullshit though.