[pkulak]

I think the point is that when you don’t control the ad, it’s a bit tough to normalize its audio. And controlling the ad means bringing ad serving in house, which while possible, is a huge engineering ask.

I guess the solution is to switch to a proper ad insertion company that normalizes to -24 like you’re supposed to, but that’s not cake either. Especially if contracts are signed.

[dinfinity]

I assume that they also have mechanisms to check that the content itself is legal to broadcast. Checking the loudness and rejecting based on them in that process should be trivial.

[mitthrowaway2]

If you're streaming the audio waveform, you can calculate the peak volume and adjust the gain.

[radley]

Most streaming audio already share the same peak volume. The problem is compression. You can compress the hell out of audio, make it sound extremely loud, and it will still have the same peak volume as uncompressed audio.

[topranks]

Uh huh.

What people are now talking about here is to normalise the “average volume” (by using compression to increase it, or just lowering the volume to decrease).

The problem is the “average volume” of 30 minutes of video, depending on the content, could be quite low.

So matching the ad to that level might not work. The nightmare response we might get is the average volume of TV/movies will be pushed to the limit in future, removing any dynamic range or impact. To comply with the rules for ads. Sigh.

[Ar-Curunir]

Well maybe then they should have done quality control. We’ve gotta stop making excuses for these companies that are making money hand over fist.

[dualvariable]

They might have to hire some people and create some jobs...

Oh, the humanity...