Local Fox Affiliate Audio Goes to Blast Out...

[Jimmersd]

Local Fox Affiliate Audio Goes to Blast Out Mode when they switch from network programming to local. This is ridiculous. I have no idea who to complain to or how to solve this issue.

Local channel Fox 35 here in Orlando has the most obnoxious habit of playing their local commercial breaks and news programming at least half again as loud as the network feed. The FCC site has a complaint page designed to address this problem under the CALM Act but the complaint page wants very specific individual instances of over-loud commercials and this affiliate just does it all the time. Seems like their attitude is "the law be damned". I usually try to FF past all the commercial but sometimes it's not convenient.

My Panasonic TV's have a volume leveler circuit which has a tendency to compress the regular audio so much that no matter how much I increase the volume the audio is unintelligible. So that doesn't work.

What would be nice is a plug-in for WMC that compresses the audio only if it goes past a per-determined point.

Ideas?

[dmagerl]

I dont think this is a problem with just Fox. I notice it here too. Programming is at normal volume, SOME commercials are at double volume. It seems like a commerical break starts out with normal volume and then halfway through the break the volume jumps to double. When the program resumes, its back to normal volume. Yes, the local news does it too. I have to crank the volume down by half. Is it the difference between network vs local origination? It's tough to say.

I came to the conclusion that WMC is doing this. When I use the TV's built in tuner, i.e., bypass WMC entirely, I dont hear the problem. Fox sounds just fine, comparable to all the other channels.

Both Fox stations in the area have the problem on their main channel, xx.1. However, any other station that has subchannels has the problem on their sub channels but not on the main channel.

I recently changed my audio setup to route the audio via HDMI to the TV. Previously, I used SPDF output to an amp and I never had the problem..

So, yes, Fox is doing something because its most noticeable on them. But I think its WMC's fault, or at least it's the HDMI audio driver's fault, but I sure havent been able to figure out if there's anyway to fix it.

[barnabas1969]

I live in the Orlando market too. I haven't noticed this on Fox 35... but I must admit that I use ShowAnalyzer to skip commercials.

You could use Media Center's built-in "Auto volume" feature. Go to Settings -> TV -> Audio, and select "Auto volume".

[richard1980]

I disagree with barnabas' solution, but only because it doesn't solve the problem. The CALM Act was designed to fix the problem with loud commercials, and if someone isn't following the rules, I say complain to the FCC until the issue is resolved. While it might be a pain to give specific examples, if that's what they want then that's what you should give them.

[barnabas1969]

Richard, you're not wrong... but I haven't observed the same thing as the OP. I'm fairly certain that I've watched Fox 35 without commercial skipping, and I haven't noticed that their local content or commercials are louder than the show.

[Jimmersd]

I disagree with barnabas' solution, but only because it doesn't solve the problem. The CALM Act was designed to fix the problem with loud commercials, and if someone isn't following the rules, I say complain to the FCC until the issue is resolved. While it might be a pain to give specific examples, if that's what they want then that's what you should give them.

Yeah. Barnabas is probably right but the Auto-Volume feature doesn't seem to be available through the Echo (Barnabas mode on/ " echo stinks get an XBOX 360" /Barnabas mode off. Yeah, yeah, yeah ;p) . But this little rant has been storing up for a while. Just came to a head today. I have my Echo hooked up to the TVs through HDMI and still have the issue. Funny that it is mostly a problem with FOX though.

Heres a demo of the problem.
http://youtu.be/uOWrAANIRz4

[barnabas1969]

I watched your YouTube video, but I noticed that there was something cut out just when the louder volume started. What was missing? Can you post another clip without cutting out part of it?

[barnabas1969]

Oh... and did I hear dogs barking at the beginning?

[Jimmersd]

I cut nothing out. The video is just as it was recorded. All I added was the audio graph to give an example of the problem.

[Jimmersd]

Oh... and did I hear dogs barking at the beginning?

Not in my house. Might be cats complaining though.

[barnabas1969]

It seemed like the national program said something like "...on Fox" and then the local channel added "35 News..." It was a very abrupt transition.

How did you record this? Did you use a video camera? How did you create the audio graph?

[Jimmersd]

It seemed like the national program said something like "...on Fox" and then the local channel added "35 News..." It was a very abrupt transition.

How did you record this? Did you use a video camera? How did you create the audio graph?

This was recorded with a hand held Sony HDR-SR11. Audio is ambient from the camera. The video was directly copied onto my computer and imported into Adobe Premere Pro 5.5. The segment was edited in native (for the Sony) AVCHD format. The audio graph is another seperate video (from the same camera) of the actual audio graph that is displayed on the Premere Pro NLE console. I overlaid and synced it to the actual video/audio recording of the segment (no cuts). There was no adjustment/cutting/splicing of video or audio clips. The clip was exported in m4v hd and uploaded to YouTube. Any processing after that is YouTube's responsibility but the video appears to be the same as what I created here.

[Jimmersd]

Oh and I added the red line to show the average audio for the network feed, minus spikes. And to demonstrate how much hotter the local feed becomes. The redline was created in Photoshop.

[dmagerl]

Thats exactly what I hear in Chicago. It usually begins about halfway through a commercial break. Right now I just tuned to 24 and the volume during the last commerical break was fine until a Steak & Shake commercial came on. Then it and every commercial after was loud. When the program resumed, volume reverted to normal. Is a Steak & Shake commercial considered locally originated?

The built in tuner of the TV does not do this. I was flipping back and forth between the internal tuner and HDMI input while the commercials were playing and there was no volume increase on the built in tuner. Only WMC did the jump in volume.

I tried the auto-volume but the problem persisted.

The local independent station, WPWR, is also owned by fox and its audio is always loud compared to other stations with WMC, again, with the built in TV tuner, it's at a normal level.

[Jimmersd]

Thats exactly what I hear in Chicago. It usually begins about halfway through a commercial break. Right now I just tuned to 24 and the volume during the last commerical break was fine until a Steak & Shake commercial came on. Then it and every commercial after was loud. When the program resumed, volume reverted to normal. Is a Steak & Shake commercial considered locally originated?

The built in tuner of the TV does not do this. I was flipping back and forth between the internal tuner and HDMI input while the commercials were playing and there was no volume increase on the built in tuner. Only WMC did the jump in volume.

I tried the auto-volume but the problem persisted.

The local independent station, WPWR, is also owned by fox and its audio is always loud compared to other stations with WMC, again, with the built in TV tuner, it's at a normal level.

Yep that's exactly how I hear it. Halfway through a commercial break and WHAM! Twice the volume. I take it as a sign that they have switched over to local commercials. This was taken from a WMC recording of 24:Live Another Day about 20 minutes into the first hour.

Check to see if your volume leveler isn't set on the TV.

[dmagerl]

Here's an interesting tidbit.

I brought up 411-info and watched the audio settings. Whenever the audio jumps up in level, the "number of channels" changes from 6 to 2. and then when the programming resumes and the volume reverts to normal it changes back to 6.

So jmerrsd, type "411 cntrl_D" on a keyboard, or 411 "info button" on a remote to bring up the info. Then right arrow to the very last info screen to see the audio info.

[Jimmersd]

I don't see this over the Echo. Those pages on the echo show "No Info". But if I view the problem segment on my HTPC It does do this. Bad news is that I don't have speakers hooked up to that computer so I'm not sure if the audio problem is evident.
But.

I suspect you maybe might have found a possible glimmer of an indication of the symptom....maybe....

So the local Fox station is probably doing something to the audio encoding that WMC finds distasteful. Too bad, looks like a Microsoft problem. We would have had a better chance of getting Ceton or the Fox affiliate to fix it IMHO.

[barnabas1969]

Ah ha! Now I understand. 2-channel audio is controlled by the volume control in Windows and/or Media Center. If you haven't altered the default fast-forward speeds, you will see the same difference if you press the fast-forward button one time (producing pitch-corrected audio to match the first fast-forward speed).

Try adjusting the volume in Media Center to somewhere between 25 and 30 (which corresponds to 50-60 in the Windows volume control).

Now, when 2-channel audio happens (like in a commercial) it should be close in volume to the rest of the program.

NOTE: The pitch-corrected audio for the first fast-forward-speed only works on the TV which is connected directly to the PC. This does not work on the extenders. However, I think that you can still adjust the Media Center volume on an extender. If I'm wrong, try adjusting it on the PC... and see if this fixes the problem on the extender too. If not, then perhaps this is a problem related solely to the Echo.

<Barnabas mode ON>
The Echo sucks!
<Barnabas mode OFF>

[barnabas1969]

To be honest, I've never seen this problem on any of my extenders. Not even when I was using HP and Linksys extenders. I can't say whether or not it happened on the Echo because the Echo had so many other (more severe) problems that I wouldn't have noticed this minor issue in the (approximately) 4-month period during which I used the Echo. It was such a disappointment that I probably would not have noticed this issue. Heck... I couldn't watch TV for more than 30-45 minutes without a crash/reboot of the Echo. Even the act of simply touching the Echo would cause it to reboot! It was a flawed design from day one. I can understand how a static electric charge can cause an electronic device to glitch/hang/reboot. What I can't understand is how this can happen to a consumer electronics device... especially when I live in a place as humid as Florida (which means that it's much more difficult to generate a static electric charge sufficient to cause problems for an electronic assembly).

EDIT: Should I have put ON/OFF tags on the paragraph above? Hmmm... maybe not... I was only stating the fact of what I have experienced.

[Jimmersd]

I tried changing the levels on all of the controls available to me on the HTPC to no effect. Good idea though. I did find an audio driver that I thnk the Echo uses on my system and it's designated as S/PDIF and set as default. There are 2. I have 2 Echos. The levels were at 100 so I backed it down. No joy.