The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM Act) was established a few years ago to regulate the volume of television advertisements. Commercials were to be no louder than the current program airing. However, I believe that commercials are still getting around this regulation by implementing considerable amounts of dynamic range compression. This audio-mastering term refers to the difference between the loudest and quietest sounds in a mix. If heavy compression is added to an audio track, this difference gets "squished." Therefore, audio often appears to be harsh on the viewer's ears throughout a commercial's duration, and having to continuously lower the volume of a commercial can get quite annoying. Commercials should have both their volume and compression monitored.
This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.
