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[MGS61]

Hi Folks,

Can you please help with a simple question (hopefully)?
I have finally finished ripping all my CD's as FLAC files (with '0' compression setting), there must be about 500 CD's now, these are stored on a USB3 hard drive connected to my Cambridge Audio Azur 851N network player.

The problem is that the CD's have vastly different playing volumes, (generally the older ones seem quieter than new ones).

Is there a way i can simply select All my CD's as a list and get MC23 to apply volume levelling automatically?
If this can be done, can you advise if it will increase the volume of the quieter CD's to match the louder ones, or is it the other way round, or is it an average?

Lastly, if the above is possible i would now have all my CD's volume levelled, so, if i then rip a new CD, how would i match this to the same level as the ones i have already levelled without repeating the whole process?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Spike1000]

Did you run the 'Analyse Audio' when you imported the tracks into MC? (It's under the import settings)

If not no worries you can select tracks, right click Library Tools | Analyse Audio to run the process manually (it will take a long time if they all have to be done!)

Then under Tools | Options | Audio | DSP & Output format you can enable 'Volume Levelling'.

You can then see if it's being applied by clicking on the 'waveform' symbol near the top right search box when a tracks playing.

I touch on this in my videos linked in my footer.

Spike

[AndrewFG]

It’s under the menu Tools / Advanced Tools / Analyze Audio

[JimH]

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Volume_Leveling

[RD James]

Once your library is analyzed, since you are playing to a networked media player you will have to configure the DLNA server in the Media Network options.
You need to set it to always convert tracks to PCM 24-bit or PCM L24, and enable Volume Leveling in DSP Studio.
 
EDIT: Wait - are you playing via a USB drive connected to the Cambridge player, or from your Media Center PC streaming audio to the Cambridge player over your network?
If the tracks are being played via a USB drive, JRiver is not involved in playback at all.
You would have to create new copies of all of your tracks with Volume Leveling baked into to the files, instead of JRiver applying DSP during playback.
It's easily done, but not what I would recommend.

[MGS61]

Thank for the replies guys,
Just to be clear, i have ripped all my CD's as FLAC files and they are residing on a USB hard drive connected directly to my Cambridge Audio 851N.
JRiver's only task was to rip the CD's, at present i do not have a NAS drive and the 851N is not on a network, so the files are being played direct from the USB (which sounds amazing!), i know this is not ideal, but the 851N broke my bank account and will have to wait for the NAS drive etc.

At the moment i don't actually know if i applied 'Analyse Audio' when i ripped my CD's (i will check over the weekend).

What i indend to do is make a backup of all my FLAC rips (just in case it goes wrong), then try the volume levelling process as desribed by everyone who has replied.
So am i correct in assuming this process will essentially overwrite all my files with new versions that have volume levelling applied??
I appreciate this will take a while but i can hopefully just start it going and leave it running overnight.

What i am still a little confused over is how JRiver decides what is 'correct' level to adjust too, i.e. does it compare all the volume levels min to max that it encounters, or does it just adjust all tracks to a predetermined 'normal' level, i.e. some will be reduced and some will be boosted?

Many thanks for your help guys, i will try all this over the weekend and report back next week.

[Spike1000]

So am i correct in assuming this process will essentially overwrite all my files with new versions that have volume levelling applied??

No, in simple terms it writes a value to a tag in the metadata of the audio file. The tag simply says the value to use to level the volume of that track to a defined standard. It does not change the actual audio data at all. It just has to read the data to calculate what value to write to the tag; this is the thing that takes the time.

What i am still a little confused over is how JRiver decides what is 'correct' level to adjust too, i.e. does it compare all the volume levels min to max that it encounters, or does it just adjust all tracks to a predetermined 'normal' level, i.e. some will be reduced and some will be boosted?

It's an agreed audio standard; R128 in this case https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Volume_Leveling

Spike

[MikeO]

Sorry a bit late ...

You are out of luck. I for a long time did exactly this with the baby brother CXN . Same streamer unit

You are reading directly from the external drive and J River has no influence over it. So analyzing your audio will have no effect.

What I did was to connect the USB drive to My main pc , connected to my router then use the CXN wi fi USB dongle to feed the CXN via a network

Set MC to Media network on configure the DLNA server to use the DSP and you’ll get sound leveling

You can still use Cambridge connect to control it all and the DLNAmenus are far better then CA native USB menus

This could get very long winded PM me if you wish, I have probably tried all variants of this at some time

You may wish to splurge the 10$ and get JRemote it’s streets ahead of CA connect.

Hope this helps

Mike

[MikeO]

Second stab

If you Convert Audio you can apply DSP which is what rd James is alluding to

You may have fool it to Convert from Flac to flac I have never tried it

I would assume the conversions will be leveled , worth an experiment

I would still fav our the network option with your USB drive as. A  Pseudo NAS

Mike

[RD James]

You don't need a NAS - in fact that wouldn't help at all, since it would just be replacing the USB HDD connected to the Cambridge player.
You would enable Media Network in JRiver and use it running on your PC to serve the files to the Cambridge player.
 
Audio analysis does not touch the audio data in your files.
It analyzes them and then writes a tag (just like album name, track name, artist etc) which tells the player to adjust the volume by a set amount; e.g. -3dB for one track +1dB for another etc.
If the player supports ReplayGain or R128 tags, it could read those tags and do the leveling itself, but I don't see an option for that in the manual.
 
If you want to bake volume leveling into the tracks - which will be done on a per-track basis - then you have to convert your ripped files with the Volume Leveling DSP enabled.
I'd move the originals to a location like "X:\Music\Originals\" (where X is your drive) and then have Media Center create new FLACs from those with the DSP applied to another folder like "X:\Music\Normalized\".
This does require that you have enough space on the drive to store two copies of each track. That's not strictly necessary though. You can replace the originals if you want, but this process irreversibly changes the files, unlike the file tags which are created during analysis.

[MGS61]

Hi again,
Thank you for the replies guys, I really don't want to have JRiver connected to my CA851N as it would mean running an Ethernet cable round the house and i don't want to use wifi.
I would like to 'keep it simple' and just use the direct connected USB hard drive as it works perfectly, i just have the minor problem with the volume levels.

I am a bit new to all this, so reading between the lines from the replies, i still not 100% sure if it is possible to create new FLAC files with volume levelling applied??
(I have made a complete back-up of all my existing files so i have a way back should disaster strike).

What i really need if possible, is a 'dummies guide or walk through' of what i need to do to create a complete FLAC copy of my existing library, but with Volume levelling applied (if this is at all possible)?

Many Thanks.

[ferday]

Convert format (right click, library tools)

Choose the flac converter and make sure to check the DSP (in the converter options).  In the DSP settings, choose the volume levelling.  Not a walkthrough per se but you'll see it readily as you go thru the menus.  Play around with stuff! 

The converted tracks will have "baked in" levelling, I use this for my car stereo USB devices.

Use a better compression than 0, it's still lossless and over a bunch of files you'll save a good bit of space.

[MikeO]

One last plug for wi fi ....

I got round low wi fi signals by putting an extender next to the CXN

You can then run a Ethernet cable from the extender to the CA

You only need 300N the wi fi dongle is only 150N

I did this for while but eventually put in Ethernet, in my case I had to run it OVER the roof — the joy of concrete houses in SA

Nag over

Mike

[MGS61]

Hi guys,
Thank you for all your help with this, i have finally got round to sorting this volume levelling problem, i had a few mini disasters along the way but i have now analyzed all my tracks and made all the volume levelling settings that people on this forum have advised, i have now produced a new FLAC to FLAC copy of my entire library with the Volume levelling 'baked' in. (i still have the original FLAC files also).

I can confirm that all the volume levels are now all very close.

What i am a little surprised about though is how low JR has taken the new level, i have to have my amplifier set at a much higher figure than before (once i ticked "volume leveling" i had all the default JR settings, i think it was R128). This is not really an issue, but i would like the new 'standard' level to be a bit higher, so i guess the question is - can the level that JR corrects all the tracks to be adjusted?

Cheers.

[RD James]

What i am a little surprised about though is how low JR has taken the new level, i have to have my amplifier set at a much higher figure than before (once i ticked "volume leveling" i had all the default JR settings, i think it was R128). This is not really an issue, but i would like the new 'standard' level to be a bit higher, so i guess the question is - can the level that JR corrects all the tracks to be adjusted?

The R128 spec has a target of -23 LUFS (dB) which is required to have good leveling.
The louder your target volume, the more variance there is likely to be on playback, since anything with peaks which exceeds -1 LUFS will have to be reduced in volume relative to the target level.
You can bump up the volume a bit (3-6 dB) via the Parametric Equalizer DSP, but it is likely to reduce the effectiveness of volume leveling. I wouldn't recommend it, unless it's your only option because the amplifier cannot get loud enough.