21–30 of 101 posts
I found this to be an issue on YouTube. It wasn’t necessarily malicious. I often put on a no-talking video in the background while reading and the ad interruptions became really loud. I eventually just ended up subscribing, but this is great to see.
> The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” […]. Server-side ads can have differing volumes due to companies using various encoding pipelines. Boo-freaking-hoo. Cry me a river, poor streaming services without the technical know-how to calculate an ad…
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.
Well, since loud ads may be going away, I want to share my observations for posterity: Loud ads only annoyed some people. Or rather, some people found them hellishly torturous (mostly neurodivergent people like me) and others were remarkably okay with them (or were just placated by the thought of saving a few dollars a month)
My parents used to have the TV on, blaring, all day long. The ads back then were loud too. They liked the "background noise". They'd read with it on, have conversations shouting over it, and so on. Baffled me. I often wondered, why not just plop down a food blender and leave it on? Why pay for cable?!
> The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” […]. Server-side ads can have differing volumes due to companies using various encoding pipelines. Boo-freaking-hoo. Cry me a river, poor streaming services without the technical know-how to calculate an ad…
> See, that’s just flat-out lying. What’s this mythical circumstance where playing audio A at the same volume as audio B on one device will magically make A louder than Bon another? Regarding your second point: as any audio engineer or electronic musician knows, the same exact audio absolutely will sound very different on different speakers, depending on how well they replicate various sounds, what level of gain is b…
The streamers should be responsible for the signal. If the device front end has crazy frequency response or the backend does weird DSP tricks, that’s on the device manufacturers.
Well, since loud ads may be going away, I want to share my observations for posterity: Loud ads only annoyed some people. Or rather, some people found them hellishly torturous (mostly neurodivergent people like me) and others were remarkably okay with them (or were just placated by the thought of saving a few dollars a month)
My parents used to have the TV on, blaring, all day long. The ads back then were loud too. They liked the "background noise". They'd read with it on, have conversations shouting over it, and so on. Baffled me. I often wondered, why not just plop down a food blender and leave it on? Why pay for cable?!
Mindless scrolling is the modern version of this, but it's worse because there isn't even a shared experience that might spur a conversation.
People like you and me are quite the opposite: we hate external structure and long to be left to our own thoughts and devices. It's not too dissimilar to micromanagement in that respect. What's the point of having a brain (and the rest of the body, that matter) if you can't use it?
I just use Spotify premium how do you get feee music with ads??
I also self-host Navidrome in my homeserver.
I found this to be an issue on YouTube. It wasn’t necessarily malicious. I often put on a no-talking video in the background while reading and the ad interruptions became really loud. I eventually just ended up subscribing, but this is great to see.
I don’t think YouTube normalizes the audio on their videos. I have no idea why, but that could easily become a quiet video that leads into a -16 LUFS ad that blows your ears out.
> The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” […]. Server-side ads can have differing volumes due to companies using various encoding pipelines. Boo-freaking-hoo. Cry me a river, poor streaming services without the technical know-how to calculate an ad…
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.
Two reasons:
Highest quality available for every media. Bluray remuxes are a game changer, when available.
Every media in one app.