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Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

matthewfelgate.wordpress.com

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Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#131

Post by RF_Enthusiast »

eastbound wrote: post #27
matthewfelgate wrote: post #2

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

It’s funny because broadcasters have notmalized ads at +6 dB compared to the rest of the radio. It’s actually measured in LUFS, and it’s normalized worldwide for radio, podcasts, TV, movies, and commercials, so that commercials are louder. LUFS measures the loudness , which is not exactly the same as volume - it makes quiet moments louder so that everything can be heard while the car engine runs, but the drawback is…

> It’s funny because broadcasters have normalized ads at +6 dB compared to the rest of the radio.

In the US, the loudness rule was made by politicians who had no technical background.

What they came up with was that the loudest part of the commercial can not be louder than the loudest part of the program surrounding it.

Broadcasters were quick to compress and limit the commercial audio into a brick, and normalize it just below the "100%" of the programming. The end result was a much, much louder commercial, that was technically a lower peak volume (but much higher average volume).

The law to lower the peak volume permits a higher average volume, and that has been exploited.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#132

Post by fibonachos »

wrp wrote: post #109
imtyler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

Something I'm honestly curious about....I can understand the need for advertising, but why do DJs talk so much? I would much prefer radio to have only music and ads. Living in Japan in the 1990s, I completely gave up on radio because the talking:music ratio was about 2:1.

My uneducated guess: To keep you listening while minimizing royalty payments for playing music?

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#133

Post by cronix »

amatecha wrote: post #123
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will remove ads whenever it is technically feasible to do so. If it's not technically feasible to do so, then I'll avoid the ads by simply not engaging with the content at all. There are no circumstances where I find media existing with ads to be superior to the media not existing, so if ad blocking were to kill radio, then I'm perfectly fine with that.

Yeah, there was a YouTube channel I'd watch, but the guy started having sponsored ads in the middle of his videos. I just stopped watching the channel. Oh well, missing out on some cool content, whatever. I'm not going to listen to some propaganda about some VPN or Grammarly or counseling services or whatever other stupid crap I have zero interest in.

I just hit the "L" key a few times and forward by 10 seconds for ads that are part of the content. uBlock origin blocks all of the youtube ads that aren't part of the "broadcast."

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#134

Post by rexreed »

nkozyra wrote: post #113

My understanding is there are laws about maximum broadcast volume, at least in the U.S. In general, it's not that the overall volume is louder on advertisements / talking, it's that the compression / limiting makes it seem louder. Music - even heavily compressed modern music - still needs some dynamics, so it generally feels quieter. This is especially pronounced on television.

I think the intent is to reduce the volume to near 0 during ad and DJ breaks, not normalize the volume against the music volume

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#135

Post by RF_Enthusiast »

imtyler wrote: post #83
matthewfelgate wrote: post #2

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

Hello fellow radio person!

Looking at the script, it's just lowering the volume, possibly so it's at or below the average volume of the rest of the content (on a Sonos speaker using TuneIn).

One of the things wrong with our industry, inspired by legislation made by people with no technical background, is that the peak volume of a commercial can not be louder than the peak volume of the surrounding program.

So some in the industry processed the commercials into audio bricks, with the peak audio level at or below what's required. But the average audio of the commercial was much higher than the average audio of the programming. While it's legally lower volume, it's perceived as higher volume.

While this script is made for TuneIn via Sonos, I think the philosophy of louder average volume has migrated as a regular feature in streaming. I also think it's why many artists on ad-supported sales/streaming platforms process their tracks into bricks, so their track is not perceived as lower volume and less energy.

I can't speak for the person who coded this, but I think they are just correcting the legacy exploit, and not trying to outright remove the advertisements. (The example they give lowers the volume to "15", not "0")

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#136

Post by nkozyra »

rexreed wrote: post #134
nkozyra wrote: post #113

My understanding is there are laws about maximum broadcast volume, at least in the U.S. In general, it's not that the overall volume is louder on advertisements / talking, it's that the compression / limiting makes it seem louder. Music - even heavily compressed modern music - still needs some dynamics, so it generally feels quieter. This is especially pronounced on television.

I think the intent is to reduce the volume to near 0 during ad and DJ breaks, not normalize the volume against the music volume

Right, but my point is the actual dbs don't change, just the constant min/max of the signal's amplitude.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#137

Post by CamperBob2 »

imtyler wrote: post #115
GoatOfAplomb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You matter" is distinct from "you deserve to have this job." I think you'll get a lot more support on the former than the latter.

What? Are you implying I don't deserve my job or I shouldn't exist?

You should exist. But you are not your job.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#138

Post by thewebcount »

imtyler wrote: post #83
matthewfelgate wrote: post #2

A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

I stopped listening to the radio about 15 years ago because of how obnoxious the ads had gotten. I haven’t started up again. I can get ad-free content in numerous ways (paying, ad blocking, creating it myself, etc.). This reminds me of people in areas where tobacco is grown moaning about how laws limiting public smoking would put them all out of jobs. Yeah, that doesn’t really make the case for why we should keep it.

Re: Turn the radio volume down for adverts and DJs talking

#140

Post by horsawlarway »

toad_master wrote: post #117
imtyler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aw. I want to like this, but I work in radio. If you remove ads then there's no reason for the broadcaster to keep going. I'm not trying to be controversial, but if you remove profit how can the business continue to exist? And if terminating the business is your goal, why? People seem to have a grudge against radio and I honestly don't know why. It's my livelihood. I'm not seeking sympathy, but I am curious.

If you are the type of person who only does something when it benefits you, I can understand why you would see things this way. Profit and personal gain are not the only motives that other people have for their actions. Sometimes people do things for the sake of enjoying them. Some really crazy people actually do things to help improve the world, at their own personal expense, with no tangible benefit to themselves.…

> If I want to come at this from a capitalist perspective, you are not entitled to other people's time, attention, or money.

Yup - This is a result of making the advertisers your true customer rather than me, the listener. In the meantime, that complete willingness to sell me as a product, and the lack of any existing contract, means that I am utterly entitled to remove any/all ads that you might embed in your product. I don't have to listen to the trash - you're yelling into the void, I can choose to cover my ears.

I understand that mass broadcast communication (radio, OTA tv) started going down that route because it's hard to limit the audience of a mass broadcast to charge a fee - but I'm not all that sympathetic to where the industry has ended up.

Frankly... I don't really know that I would mind if most of the commercial stations went out of business. It would be nice to make space for more content outside of the "top hits of [____]" and a blathering DJ. I'd like to see more stations act like NPR or college radio stations.

Do I love the NPR donation campaigns? Nope.

Do I donate? Yup. Because it means I'm still the customer.

Would I throw a couple bucks at a station to play curated playlists in different genres with no ads or interruptions? Probably. I used to throw donations at grooveshark DJs back in college for exactly that - I found a boatload of good music (mostly older titles) that way.

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