Automatic Television Volume Control

It is sometimes called a "compander" - look for it under that name.

Practically speaking, just keep the remote handy and mute them. Commercials use level processing where the peak audio voltage is not all that high but the average audio is much higher. It's called compression, among other things and is truly a pain in the ear!

So, if you use another compressor, combined with a limiter, you can effectively set a "normal" volume and commercials will no longer blare. The problem arises in how to implement the design. Are you willing to open up your TV, dissect the audio amplifier circuitry, patch in the compressor, and reassemble the TV? Because I've not seen a line-level compressor (which you can connect directly between the speakers.) All compressors are low-level devices. If you do not use your TV speakers but instead use surround sound or other speakers, then it might be possible to patch the compressor between whatever is feeding the audio to the amplifier.

I have digital cable, and there is no way its compression in this method. The sound is truly turned up much louder, and it is very, very irritating indeed.

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

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I only get the normal 5 channels but yes, the ads have gotten worse over the last couple of years (say +3dB). I reckon the problem is due to two factors.

A] The massive compression that they recently seem to have been able to leverage in. During the ad's just listen for those few (nS!) where no one is talking. You can hear significant background mush.

B] Incompetance and couldn't care less attitudes of all the modern brand of transmission engineers, causing highly variable VU levels to be put out during normal programming.

Channel 5 maybe but at one time the Beeb would have sacked their lot en-masse.

regards john

I read in sci.electronics.design that john jardine wrote (in ) about 'Automatic Television Volume Control', on Fri, 7 Jan 2005:

The BBC doesn't use vu-indicators. It uses peak programme meters, which are much better. But these days, no-one looks at them. (:-(

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IMHO, maybe a circuit [serially connected chain of Resistor (1k)- a serial LC tank (1kHz) - 2 antiparallel schottky diodes] connected to an audio amplifier´s input of a TV parallel to signal & ground before the volume chip /pot/trimmer/, would mild the bumping up the commercials sounds.

The idea is that since the sound of commercials is highly compressed by dinamics, The main bothering frequencies that hit the ears is around 1KHz (-/+ 2 octaves & higher volume than normal program) would be limited futher by shothing them more to the ground. This should not effect to much on the main program sound ...

this idea woud need some experimenting IMHO ...

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You might try this.

I just wired it up on a breadboard and it seems to work ok. I used a TL071 instead of an LM741 and an MPF5245 instead of a 2N3819. I also powered it from +-12v instead of +-9v. You'll want a level control on the output. Using a 39k input resistor I varied the input from 25mv to 1v PP and the output varied from about 5.4 to 10v pp.

Mike