While I am familiar with some means of compression/expansion, having used such technology in production and broadcasting myself, and while I don’t have analysis electronics monitoring the output of my ‘cable/sat box’ …

By ‘level’, I didn’t mean to point toward amplitude only, but level of ‘energy’ in the waveform, which does increase as compression is pushed toward a ‘brick wall’. I didn’t intend to mislead.

I appreciate Altec’s effort of experimenting with a ‘box’ of his own.

In listening to the ‘major networks’, my subjective listening would seem to indicate that the audio levels follow the ‘increase via compression not amplitude’ description give by Altec. However, in listening to some cable channels, I sense such a huge jump in audio that, as a person familiar with compression, I cannot attribute the jump to compression alone, but judge that amplitude has also risen by an egregious degree.

It is broadcasters in this latter group that would easily exceed a threshold and have their commercials’ audio cut or cut back by a ‘monitor box’. But, as Altec points out, broadcasters are not very consistent, a single threshold would not do for all. And, even within the same program, one can see commercials inserted at least at four levels: the production level, the network/national level, the local broadcast level, and the cable/satellite provider level. This means that, within one group of commercials, one might see both commercials that limit themselves to reasonable audio and those that do not. I would tolerate those that merely use compression and make subsequent decisions with my remote’s mute button ... and I do appreciate the idea of Dolby Volume and similar options.