Since I'm not sure that folks are really understanding what I'm driving at with Global's audio versus its US counterpart, I recorded this past week's episode of The Office twice - once on Global and once on NBC. I selected a short passage that demonstrates the issue.

NBC MP3

Global MP3

First, a side-by-side comparison waveform of the exact same section. NBC's original audio is on the top (downmixed to mono), and Global's on the bottom.



Doesn't look especially the same. Note all the level ramping during what were originally silent passages. This is all background noise being elevated out of the backgound.

Here's a close-up to show it better:



I have calculated that the background noise is being increased by 18db over NBC's reference level - that means soft background noises are 8 times louder than they should be. That turns a mild amount of environment hum into starship-grade engine noise.

And it's not just silent areas that this affects. Take a look at this comparison of what was an outgoing telephone call ringing tone:



Note how the first sound of someone rustling the handset is louder than it should be, but then the following ring tone is ramped quieter than it should be.

Global has some little box stuck in their audio chain, originally sold as a way to help normalize soft programs versus loud commercials, and someone's configured it so poorly that it's trying to normalize/compress every 5 seconds of audio and being allowed to go to extremes to do so. And it's not just Global that's doing this. I've noticed that CityTV's audio, which was a previous second for lack-of-quality annoyances, has this year started using the same misguided audio compression settings as Global.

Oh no, it's spreading!

Holy mother of Kosh, that's bad.

I'm going to show this to some co-workers for laughs. I'm trying to imagine the possible settings that would lead to such a result, and my current guesses are:

A) there's a completely unnecessary normalizer in there after the compressor

B) the input level to the compressor is insanely high and the noise increase is due to the compressor's release

C) the compressor has a super-low threshold and automatic gain compensation is poorly configured.

Either way, they're doing it wrong, unless someone directly involved shows up and presents a logical reason for such a setup.

Daniel,
that's a water-tight demonstration of a real problem. I hope you can somehow get the attention of the engineers involved. I would absolutely hate to have to listen to the Global signal. It is horrendous.

Thanks. Normally I'm not one to go to such extremes, but I've been discovering that an uncomfortably high number of shows I like to watch/record are on Global, and I really can't stand listening to that audio. It drives me nuts every time I can start to hear the background getting louder.

I guess the last straw was discovering that City is now doing the exact same thing. So someone else thought it was a good idea... :-/

That's ridiculous Dan. Have you contacted anyone over there yet? Also, do you experience these same symptoms with these channels over cable?

I agree with Bill, it probably won't help, but it is worth a try.

Long live the land of auto-gain.
CanWest was financially overstretched.
Shaw will hopefully stop some of the previous owners sillyness and improve the technologies being used.
Rogers uses a bad financial model also, go into debt and dig out.
Rogers OMNI2 signal is much better than their OMNI1 signal.
The digital signals at 64.1, 65.1, and 66.1 have tiny ERPs.
Quite possibly, at the moment, they don't give them too much thought.

If you watched the FOX-TV Bears/Bills game from Rogers Centre on 7 Nov 2010, the image appeared a bit muddy when compared to the CBS game.

Think the folks at Dome Productions were using their analogue cameras?