We have a small but steady number of complaints about the levels of background music in certain programmes that appear to be drowning out the commentary for some viewers. A recent post on this website about the background music levels in Time Team: The Secrets of Stonehenge led me to a very knowledgeable person indeed – the series editor for Time Team was trained as a sound engineer at the BBC so he was able to explain to me in some detail how background music levels are set and what can go wrong between the perfect conditions of a recording studio and the ears of the viewer at home.
He told me that there is a universally agreed level that sound should not rise above, but that modern compression techniques tend to bring all the sound up to this level, making the overall effect that of a noisier programme, albeit one that is still within the agreed limits. This is often evident in commercials, which tend to be highly compressed to make them stand out more in a crowded environment. Add to this trend a gradual deterioration in our ability to hear the higher frequencies as we grow older, which are important in distinguishing speech, and less than perfect conditions in many of our living rooms, and you have a situation where music, particularly percussion or synthesisers, will start to compete with the level of the voices and, in the more extreme cases, make the speech very difficult to hear.
In the case of the Time Team programme on Stonehenge, his review of the music levels on several different televisions showed that there was a danger that some people would not be able to hear Tony Robinson’s commentary clearly enough, and he immediately suggested that the sound levels should be rebalanced – ideally before the programme’s next transmission – to make sure that the programme was accessible to the widest possible audience. So thanks to you for raising it and to Time Team for being such good listeners!
PS A quick update to let you know that the rebalanced version will be broadcast this Saturday (13th June) on More 4 at 10pm
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I see I am not alone by far with my complaints!
I’m pleased to hear the dreadful ‘background’ music is to be rebalanced but am still left to ask WHY IS IT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE? If Tony or anyone else where to give a talk it would presumably NOT be accompanied by live or taped music, so why do TV producers insist that when someone is talking to me on TV, I should enjoy having to struggle to hear their words? This is simply madness, style over contents. Tony is trying to inform the viewer, why make that difficult, the rest of the programme is largely free of such unwanted enhancement, why make such a mess of Tony’s commentary.
And, of course, it goes without saying that the same applies to all programmes, when someone is talking it is only polite to listen. Do the people who inflict this noise on us poor viewers insist on having loud music playing whenever they speak? I very much doubt it.
I am so frustrated that the programmes keep changing in the morning at 9am. I really really enjoy waking up to watch Will and Grace in the morning before work and this morning, not only have times been changed like usual, but it’s gone entirely. The Hughes Family program too, disappeared one day replaced by another before the series end. It seems counterproductive to show enough of something to attract viewers and then change it for something COMPLETELY different. There is no relation between what the programme is switched to. I almost feel like someone is randomly picking what is broadcast with no consideration for who is watching simply because it’s 9 in the morning.
Please please choose a series and stick with it. You’ve just lost me as a morning viewer.
You ned to reorganise your website. It is full of dead ends and links that lead nowhere. When you redesign something you should check for backwards compatbility. Time Team must be one of your most popular shows but finding it is like a dig in itself – and with no geo-phys!
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