Add-on automatic volume control

All the change in volume is done at the station in audio. All radios will do the same thing. TV sets used to be really loud during comercials but the FCC made them put a limit on how much louder they could be than the programs.

Whatever radio you get you will have to find a device to go between the radio and the speaker.

micky wrote on 6/10/2024 12:44 PM:

The only thing I can think of is to feed your TV audio output into the microphone jack of a Windows computer, and then use a software equalizer with "telephone" equalizer setting to enhance the human voice and suppress the music (and all other non-human voice frequencies). When your TV is playing, the computer speaker output will be mainly clear human voice. When the TV commercial comes on, most of the music will still be suppressed, and the human voice amplitude will be "clipped" (slightly distorted).

I think I have posted the Windows software equalizer before. It is quite a lengthy step to install that free software. I will only re-post if someone is really interested. You'll also need to fiddle with the hardware to feed the TV audio output into the computer's microphone jack.

Raspberry PI 4 - Auto Volume Control & EQ setup for CABLE TV - Keep the volume same on all channels

it's something related to what I want, but it's software. Ralph's and Mighty's suggestions are also appreciated, but not close enough.

Changed search words and found this

The ratings are few and from 1 to 5. $50.

The sound engineer who gave it 1 star says the only other model is disconintued but another reviewer started at 5 stars, went down to 1, then said that Rolls SL33B was better. It's 3.9 starts on 131 reviews for $89. Still not that high, but sounds better than nothin'. If I can go to bed listening to the radio, it will be worth it. It has some sort of gain control and a threshold adjustment, and a "red LED for general indication of the amount of gain reduction in the circuit". The first one didn't have any of this.

When I got to the product website itsself it says "helps control the level over loud, obnoxious commercials, for example." That's half of what I had in mind, and the other half is similar.

The first internet station I had a problem with was CNN. Would CNN live be what's called a streaming service??? I hear that term often but I have almost no idea what it means. What about the fact that I listened to CNN via iHeartRadio. iHeartRadio is a streaming service, right?

Because a proposed law would regulated the volume of commercials on "streaming services".

The Calm Act requires commercial noise levels to be about the same as the program. Since it passed, it has been criticized by viewers who say it’s not being enforced.

In May 2022, another law was introduced addressing these complaints. It’s called the Calm Modernization Act. It applies to streaming services and also modifies the enforcement of the original law.

The Federal Communications Commission is responsible for enforcement. Right now, the FCC uses a complaint-driven enforcement process. If the Calm Modernization Act passes, there would be a greater penalty from the FCC for violations."

Your desired solution may fit into the "too hard" category. The pragmatic solution is to find something else to lull you to sleep. Consider a white noise machine for example. I haven't checked, but there may even be a smartphone app for what you want with a built-in timer so you don't drain the battery all night. There are also apps that provide restful sound tracks to aid in meditation. Combined with using the "do not disturb" setting on the smartphone to avoid undesired audio notifications, it just may do the trick. There may even be internet "stations" that provide wall to wall soothing music that wouldn't require any additional equipment. Think outside the box when plan A doesn't seem feasible.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Tune-in on Android (but not in Windows) has a timer like that, and when I was traveling abroad and using the phone** in bed to listen to USA radio, I would use that.

(Since then, I've tried to find a timer app that would turn the whole phone off, and for Android there are no simple ones, only one that requires accessibilty to be implemented and a script written that simulates what one does with his hands to turn the phone off. So I've given up on turning the phone off with a timer.)

(All the VPNs tell you reasons to use them all the time, and if you pay by the year they are cheaper, but the reasons don't convince me and I cancel the VPN when I'm not in a foreign country.)

And sometimes I took it with me to bed, using the timer. That included a problem because the phone wasn't really loud enough, and earbuds while asleep didn't seem to be a good idea, and also I was afraid I'd roll over onto the phone or knock it on the floor. But since then I've bought a bluetooth speaker, about the size of a very large egg, and I haven't used that while sleeping yet, but I use it as a better spearkerphone sometimes and it's great. It has a mike, and plays different notes when you turn it on or off.

Thanks.

It appears what I want is now called sound compresion. why, Idon't know, but that's it. And maybe sound limiting.

But when I search for that, I find more hits than for avc or agc. (Gain control was for tv and included the whole signal, including the picture.)

And I may even want to use it for the computer. I have a fancy audio program I never adjust. Maybe it has this too. but if if not, I found:

OTOH, here is more about the Rolls 3333b, which is hardware and costs $90 at several places:

I guess I can't use white noise, because I want to listen to the news. I would stay up hours later to listen but I need to sleep, so I at least want to listen until I fall asleep.

I could try to get CNN to turn down the volume of the commercials but it's really iHeart I'm listening to that suppplies the ads now, and they don't seem to have any way to be written to, and I doubt they would do it.

Maybe not. Another good thing about Amazon is that it lets one ask quesions and it accepts answers from the public. As far as I've noticed, none of the other vendors do, and the maker rolls.com has an FAQ but it's only got 5 or 10 questions and none of them were mine.

Same product:

Of that doesn't mean it doesn't treat its warehouse stafff badly, and they'd be number 1 even if they diddn't do that, so they should stop. --- I have an amp on the same shelf next to the radio but haven't used it for years, and it isn't working. I'll have to find out what's wrong, and maybe I can use that, but it plays through 1x2 foot speakers hung on the opposite wall. Might fill the room with too much sound, or is that impossible? Might be unable to play it quietly. ???? Maybe I can connect it to little PC speakers instead.

The original post here was about radios, but I checked my computer. On the desktop computer, I'd bought an add-in sound card. I can't remember why I was unsatisfied with the built-in sound.

But I have a SoundBlaster Audigy FX. The card was a few years old when I bought it, so there is probably newer, as well as competing brands. I'm sure many, most, or all have audio compression in their software.

For this card, if one installs the included software (installation was not needed for the card to work), it has a Smart Volume option, which is sound compression. It has 3 options, Loud (which is no compression, maxiumum loudness), Normal (which has a slide bar and gives a wide range of compression, from 0 to 100% whatever that means), and Night, which has no slide bar and lowers volume even more for listening "at night" and probably in bed.

Compression refers to compressing the range of volume, not to compressing data, but I don't know details.

I had this option entirely off (the default) and didn't notice a problem from the station I normally play on the PC and then broadcast on FM to my bedroom radio. But it's on Normal now. No change noted, but if I were to switch to CNN sound only, which uses iHeart or Tunenin, it would probably be a big advantage.

I looked at all this card's options when I got it, didn't think I needed Smnart Volume, but then forgot that I had it.