Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for June 14, 2018

I don’t know if the function is still available on any new TV sets, but I once had a rear projection big screen model that had a volume limiter mode. No matter how loud the commercials or program normally might be, it would not allow the volume to go above what you set the maximum level for. It should be made available for every TV made today. Advertisers would hate it.

Set it on a secondary language so you can learn as you watch.

Turn it up to hear the dialogue, down to kill the awful music, and captions to follow the dialogue when the “background” music drowns it out.

I use the CC to help me not to miss parts of the dialogue even though I have hearing aids I still don’t hear as well as I like

I feel ya, Arlo. Either dialogue’s too quiet to follow, or music and commercials are so loud other people get ticked off.

This is SO true. And it’s not just the music. Some shows have different scenes at different volumes. very frustrating. Great observation!

So far, my hearing is still excellent, so I know it’s not just me.

What I have noticed is that sitcoms such as “Big Bang” have crystal-clear dialogue, as do the news programs.

However, shows such as “Walking Dead” seem to specialize in slurred speech and mumbling.

It’s maddening.

We record everything on the dvr and watch it when we have time, doesn’t matter how loud the commercials are because we don’t watch them

My problem is when the dialogue is low and indistinct, then the action is sudden and LOUD

Easily fixed. Turn the darn thing off.

thought for a second he was avoiding joe buck broadcasting a football game.

Oddly enough, this scenario can be just as annoying in the reverse. The local classical music station plays the music louder than the speaking bits. If I want to hear the news I have to turn up the volume, and then the music is louder than I like.

I wonder….can the “closed caption” be somehow stopped for commercials?…. :)>

At this point in my life, I’d like to have closed captions kick on every time the characters start whispering! Westworld is the latest example of a show that has me pumping up the volume!

I simply got tired of watching TV

It used to be that in a show (be it at the theater or on television) the STORY was what mattered…. and the STORY consisted of what people were saying to each other…. SO…. the sounds were mixed in such a way that the DIALOGUE was made the most prominent in the sound track.

Now-a-days…. too damn many films and television programs have the STORY and hence the DIALOGUE be SECONDARY or TERTIARY to either a) the music they layer on the soundtrack, b) the various explosions and other peripheral noise, or the damn CGI that is used in place of actual acting to allow folks to do things impossible in the natural world.

This is why we have 75% of the films at the theaters being based on comic books (lots of action, lots of booms, little story) and the typical Stars Wars films have 90-95% battle scenes and perhaps MAYBE 5% story.

It is annoying.

My hearing is poor after years of inner ear problems so I have the subtitles on all the time. It does p*ss me off that some channels like SyFy won’t put them on their programmes.

Its the shows that have their music louder than the actors that get me.

If you have a center channel, it’s not so bad because then the music and dialogue each have a place. But if not, the music is always way too loud compared to dialogue.

I’ve done that when Gina is on the phone. She gets to talking loudly but if I turn up the TV volume then she can’t hear the call.

Too many commercials at first seem a part of the program. There is no pause, then the ad. One needs to have a fast trigger finger to hit mute on time.

Nowadays, it is not the advertisements that are annoying, it is the constant media whining … Hillary lost, Trump won, Congress is dysfunctional … all of the over-dramatization of half truths. It will only get worse as November elections near.

I was under the impression that the programmers were going to be forced to make the the commercials the same**loudness** as the shows, by law. They are extra loud because in the early days of TV people got up and went to the kitchen to get food, other the bathroom, and that way they could still hear the commercials!

I use the “CC” function to silence annoying voices. There is a Woman on one of the Military history shows that was at one time a Man. No judgment on her transition but I can’t abide her caricature of a contralto voice. The “CC” is also ineffective for the voices in my head.

I produced video and mixed sound for some 30 years. It’s plain to see that the children “producing” material today have NO freaking idea how to mix sound. Nobody has the brains to teach it correctly any more. Instead, everything is ‘make it louder’, instead of paying attention to the sound space. The sound HAS to mirror the visuals: when the actors are up front, their dialog has to be up front, and all other sound in the background. When the actors are to one side, so should the sound be there. But now, the so-called “mix” is done with the monitors up far too high, which causes hearing saturation – you can’t hear what levels things are actually running at, from source to source..

No flag day theme???

I can always hear the TV better if the captions are on