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It has to do with sound compression. It’s not so much that it’s louder, more that the average sound level is higher.
That said, fuck them.
Compression is a bit of it. The other bit is commercials usually mix in stereo and negate the 5.1. By not using the subwoofer, it gives an extra 10dB of immediately available headroom, before any compression or limiting occurs. 10dB is... you guessed it, more than double the amount of perceived loudness.
The solid rectangle block is the result of using a limiter. Basically a hard ceiling compressor, for simplicity.
source: been there done that
Yeah, having worked on ads you can be sure we check our levels to make the most of the audio's range. It's a technical issue not an intentional one. The people to be annoyed at are the content creators who don't check their levels and have quiet audio so you get blasted when properly mixed audio in an ad kicks in.
I don’t think that audio whose waveform overview looks like a rectangle is “properly mixed”. This is not at all how naturally occuring sounds look.
There’s also a huge difference between a single guy calmly explaining something vs. a person talking over background music.
Where are you getting looking like a rectangle? Are you talking about compression or maxed out levels? When mixing audio you want it to get as close to max levels without popping. If it was truly maxed to the point of looking like a rectangle it would just blow up the speaker or pop and sit still if the wave form is that messed up. Someone can explain calmly while still being mixed to appropriate levels without distortion if they were recorded at proper levels.
Levels should have nothing to do with the content and a quiet video can still be mixed in a way that a loud ad shouldn't be too jarring. The content should make the video quiet, not the levels.
I was talking about compression. Hence “waveform overview”. Of course the ads aren’t clipping. By “looking like a rectangle” I mean something like the third image in this example as compared to the second image, where both have the same amplitude, but the third still sounds louder.
I thought for TV at least they are regulated on average loudness, so they take advantage of that to make parts of the commercial super loud.
Yeah, I assumed we were talking about streaming like youtube.
