ABC TV's Rotten Audio

[RadioCriminal]

Tried posting this in the Engineering forum and nobody replied. Let me know what you think.

Wondering if anyone else finds ABC-TV's audio terribly harsh and poorly mixed? On many of their shows, the dialogue gets buried by music, even simple background sfx. I'm guessing they are pushing their 5.1 audio mixes beyond sanity for max loudness. I find their audio somewhat easier to take when I view the SD stereo feed but it's still pretty tough to listen to. I don't notice the same extremes on other networks. Am I too old school by just using a stereo HD TV with HDMI from the cable box? Any opinions from you guys with educated ears?

Happy holidays,

Mike (former jock/production guy)

[genlock]

Experiment with the audio settings on your tv.
Music, concert, theater etc.
Sometimes these will affect the 5.1 mix to the point that the main dialog is reduced.

[lastone]

Well....I have an old 1995 TV fed by a DTV converter box. I have heard the same thing at times.

Sounds as if the main channel audio gets lost.

I have only heard this on network shows and it usually continues until the next break. Then it's normal again.

Some kind of encoding problem I would guess.

[RadioCriminal]

Genlock: Being an audio production guy you can be sure I have tried every tweak available on my Sony TV. About the only thing that helped slightly was deep roll off of the low end which turned voices into communications quality but seemed to reduce some of the other audio competing with the dialogue. Note this has not been necessary on feeds from any other network.

Lastone: Your description comes very close to what I'm hearing. I do suspect it is an encoding problem where ambitious young audio dudes are doing hot mixes for maximum "feeling" at the expense of intelligible voices. Just a guess.

I'm going to rearrange my audio/video gear and run the cable box to the home theater receiver. Anxious to hear the result with level control of all 6 channels. If I can use state of the art surround sound decoding to produce TV dialogue that's as good as mono TCM movies, I'll be happy!

Thanks for your comments gentlemen.