It happens all the time: You’re drifting off during Conan’s musical guest when you’re suddenly startled awake by a pitchman screaming about a SALE SALE SALE THIS WEEKEND ONLY. Such notoriously loud infomercials and ads on local stations have led to a perennial outcry and at least one federal law—the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, or CALM, Act, signed into law last December. It requires the FCC to crack down on places like Ed’s Used Jalopy Lot. The problem: Most blaring commercials never actually exceed the recommended volume limit. They just sound loud compared with a TV show, where the volume of spoken dialog tends to stay well below the upper limit and only the occasional burst of, say, gunfire spikes near the max level. The majority of ads don’t pass that gunfire barrier; they simply stick close to it for their entire torturous 30- second duration. Sound engineers use a process called sweetening to keep every second near the upper limit. Result: The announcement of Furniture Liquidators’ going-out-of-business sale is never louder than the sound of that bomb going off on Fringe—it’s just as loud the whole damn time.

Unaltered commercial audio:

Sweetened commercial audio: