Is background music and nosie on TV too loud today?

Is background music and noise too loud on today's TV shows?

  • I think background music is too loud!

    Votes: 14 93.3%
  • The background music is fine. Get a hearing aide!

    Votes: 1 6.7%

  • Total voters
    15

Thread Starter

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
The recent Pay TV thread made me think about this subject. It sounds like with Pay TV at least a lot of forum members from various places get American TV.

I love most of the CBS programming. Person of Interest is awesome. I think one of the best dramas ever. But I can't hear the lousy dialog on the shows because the background music is too darn loud. It is annoying and distracting. At first I thought it was just me. Maybe just getting too old. Then I did a search. Apprenetly I am not the only one. What do others here think?

If you think background music is too loud, I encourage you to leave feedback. Here is the link for CBS.

http://www.cbs.com/feedback
 
Last edited:

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
It may be the settings on your surround sound system or TV. If you have an AV receiver,
- make sure all of your speakers are working (most dialog comes from the front center speaker if you have one).
- if you don't have a center speaker make sure your receiver knows that and directs the dialog to the other front speakers. ( use speaker setup on receiver)
- if everything is setup correctly and the background is still too loud, adjust he Attenuation from OFF (most ambient noise/most background music), day, night and midnight (most attenuation of background noises (quietest background noises).

If you don't have an AV receiver for your TV, then adjust the audio settings on the TV...
Under "menu"/"audio" maximize the mid-range and reduce the higher and lower frequencies. Or, if a graphic eq feature is not available, select the "dialog" or "voice" sound field instead of "movie" or "cinema"
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Gopher, when did you turn into a users manual? :D

I don't have all that stuff, but I have a massive stereo that the TV is hooked up to, and that includes a graphic equalizer which I have set to increase the 300Hz to 3000Hz range. Still, I struggle with some TV shows, especially when the people have British accents and the background music is about equal in amplitude to the voices.
 

rogs

Joined Aug 28, 2009
279
especially when the people have British accents
I don't find that too much of a problem. Can't imagine why?...:)

Having said that, it's early US TV series that often have the easiest dialogue to listen to and understand - especially if you don't have perfect hearing like most youngsters do....
The dialogue recording for famous US series - like Columbo and Quincy for example - have highly compressed and mid range enhanced audio for speech, and use background music with the frequency range extended about an octave higher and lower than the speech.
But the music was mixed in at a lower level: (usually between -6dB and -12dB lower).
Makes the dialogue easier to hear.

OK, not very 'hi-fi' by today's standards, but it still works well for us older folk, with less than perfect hearing!
 

Thread Starter

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
It may be the settings on your surround sound system or TV. If you have an AV receiver,
- make sure all of your speakers are working (most dialog comes from the front center speaker if you have one).
- if you don't have a center speaker make sure your receiver knows that and directs the dialog to the other front speakers. ( use speaker setup on receiver)
- if everything is setup correctly and the background is still too loud, adjust he Attenuation from OFF (most ambient noise/most background music), day, night and midnight (most attenuation of background noises (quietest background noises).

If you don't have an AV receiver for your TV, then adjust the audio settings on the TV...
Under "menu"/"audio" maximize the mid-range and reduce the higher and lower frequencies. Or, if a graphic eq feature is not available, select the "dialog" or "voice" sound field instead of "movie" or "cinema"
I am using XBMC. They have their own Audio driver. I am going to have to post there to see if there is something that can be done.

I don't have a fancy system. Just the normal TV. I did already boost the highs. It seemed to help a bit but I still think background music is too loud. And it really is superfluous anyway.
 

tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
I dont really have any issues with the background music but then I do run my surround sound past my equalizer first so I can adjust things to my liking.

After that I can also set my center speakers to a volume that works best.

Now if I could just adjust the quality of the shows. :(
 

Brownout

Joined Jan 10, 2012
2,390
Gopher, when did you turn into a users manual? :D

I don't have all that stuff, but I have a massive stereo that the TV is hooked up to, and that includes a graphic equalizer which I have set to increase the 300Hz to 3000Hz range. Still, I struggle with some TV shows, especially when the people have British accents and the background music is about equal in amplitude to the voices.
Have you considered hearing aids? I use them and can't hear s**t without 'em.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Have you considered hearing aids?
No. I'm not going to buy hearing aids for a couple of TV shows.
I am also not going to take a 4 hour pill to stop me from sneezing twice on cold mornings.

Seriously, My stereo can get to 123 db. If average sound content is 10db below the peaks, that can put 113 db in my living room. If you need hearing aids for that, you must have the lifetime audio experience of Keith Richards.

Turning up the loudness does nothing to the signal to noise ratio.
 
Last edited:

gerty

Joined Aug 30, 2007
1,305
Background is way too loud on some shows. British, Scottish accents are hard for me to hear/understand. They would probably say the same about understanding me, Hillbilly has several dialects also..:D:D
 

Metalmann

Joined Dec 8, 2012
703
Sometimes......the canned laughter, and music; is way too loud for the dialog.

If you can call TV dialog, worthy.

Must be a million worthless cop shows, every season.
 

THE_RB

Joined Feb 11, 2008
5,438
It is because they are encoded for Dolby 5.1 or whatever the new surround sound protocol is.

If you play the sound on the stereo AV out connectors in stereo the speech is too low and the music and sound effects are too loud.

It's a well known problem but the networks just don't care, if you don't have a "proper" 5 speaker surround sound system their opinion is that it is "your problem".
 

MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
28,617
A legacy post, but when I first installed a surround sound for my TV system the human dialogue seemed to be drowned out.
Now I have a small(ish) bose speaker under the TV that I can set it to Human Dialog mode which eliminates, or at least diminishes, heavy bass and other distracting music effects etc.:cool:
Max.
 
Then too, in addition to the blaring score/incidental music are the dunning ads all of which appear to fall into one of four categories:

1) Dire (I daresay extortionary) calls for screening for every disease/disorder known to humanity...
2) Pharmaceuticals/treatments ostensibly therapeutic/curative of said aliments (complete with the obligatory litany of potential iatrogenic complications most of which being 'a few orders of magnitude' worse than the primary condition)...
3) Offers of 'legal redress' Re: said iatrogenesis...
4) Perhaps most annoyingly of all -- Endless advertising of the station's/network's own programming!:mad:

At least that's 'how it was' last I looked...

Very best regards
HP
 

JoeJester

Joined Apr 26, 2005
4,390
Given the fact the rule stations do not over modulate, to commercials are compressed and the level is at the maximum allowed.

The shows do not boost their loudest signal to the maximum allowed. You might have a chance if they did. Who is at fault, the one's within the limit of the regulations or the one's who didn't bother to set the levels.
 

tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
My biggest peeve now is online media that has the sound too low and can't be brought up high enough to hear properly.

I had to add a sound booster app to fix that problem given how many online news and entertainment sites have such poor audio volume with so much of their stuff. :(

It works good for that but if I forget to turn it off before going to a new video for something then I get hit with way too much volume. :mad:
 

Hypatia's Protege

Joined Mar 1, 2015
3,228
My biggest peeve now is online media that has the sound too low and can't be brought up high enough to hear properly.

I had to add a sound booster app to fix that problem given how many online news and entertainment sites have such poor audio volume with so much of their stuff. :(
Aye! Then there's that 'species' of 'YouTuber' whose mastery of the outré art of 'microphonic respiration' must surely be the envy of 'obscene telephone callers' the world over!:rolleyes:

Then too are those who cannot be bothered to edit street/air traffic noise, screaming brats, barking dogs, quarreling neighbors, etc, etc, etc out of the background (But then I suppose tenements, 'low rent housing projects' and 'trailer parks' make for lousy studios:rolleyes:) --- For all that - nobody compares -in the way of shear annoyance- with that 'EEVblog guy'!o_O

Best regards
HP
 
Last edited:

tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
Aye! Then there's that 'species' of 'YouTuber' whose mastery of the outré art of 'microphonic respiration' must surely be the envy of 'obscene telephone callers' the world over!:rolleyes:

Then too are those who cannot be bothered to edit street/air traffic noise, screaming brats, barking dogs, quarreling neighbors, etc, etc, etc out of the background (But then I suppose tenements, 'low rent housing projects' and 'trailer parks' make for lousy studios:rolleyes:) --- For all that - nobody compares -in the way of shear annoyance- with that 'EEVblog guy'!o_O

Best regards
HP
Yep. Bugs me to no end when some guy is doing a educational or history lesson video on some machine while the thing is running or is doing a otherwise informative DIY project in his garage while having more of a conversation with the stupid dog or cat than the camera too.
Same with doing a lecture into their sideways cell phone while out on their morning walk or jog or in their vehicle while driving some place. :mad:

Then there the otherwise well done video except for having 10x more video time showing nothing than was needed. Perfect lighting , good vocal and sound presentation but what should be a 20 minute how to that drags out for 1 - 2 hours in real time split over 3 - 5 videos that are not linked or give a total count of and to each other. :mad:
 
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