Current Status and Problems in Mastering of Sound Volume in TV News and Commercials

Sound sources used for broadcasting on the air are usually produced and delivered in different levels of sound volume, thus inevitably creating the loudness/imbalance problem among various sound sources. This study examines the loudness of TV news anchorwomen’s voice and the sound of commercial advertisements on the Internet using Absolute Sound Level, to evaluate the current status and identify problems in the sound-mastering process. The results showed that the three most famous broadcasting companies in Korea had different sound levels while delivering their programs on the air. The use of sound compressor/limiter by producers of commercial advertisements on the Internet can be easily found where the sound level of a common dialogue reaches to the maximum level, such as the climax of heavymetal music, in order to get the audience’s attention. On the Internet, this loudness/imbalance problem gets more serious since we have two different sound sources on the same web page, one for a loud advertisement and the other for a relatively quiet personal video/audio clip.