The Listening World Deserves This Product . . .

tak

Folks,

Is there such a thing as an amplifier with self-adjusting gain that one can fit between the car radio and the speakers ?

The sudden change in the volume when an ad break comes on during a program or news is very annoying and distracting when driving.
Especially early in the morning, when the stupidest ads seem to come on when doing tricky manoeuvres.

It should not be too hard to set the final volume to a fixed level and have the main amplifier adjust its own gain to maintain this, regardless of broadcast volume which goes up and down.

Any ideas - or existing products ?

Tak.

cornbb

don't know of any products that are designed for that exact purpose. But the technique you refer to is called 'compression' - put simply, a compressor takes in an audio signal of varying loudness and squashes the volume level to make it consistent.

Radio stations use compression extensively, especially during the ads, to make them as loud as possible without distorting the signal. If you like, you can try putting a compressor somewhere in your signal chain - maybe between the stereo and the amp. Here is an example of a rackmounted studio compressor (quite a cheap one): http://www.thomann.de/ie/behringer_mdx_1600_autocom_pro_xl.htm

Probably overkill for your purposes but might do the trick anyway.