Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pschelbert]

Hi

I wonder how albums are handled if R128 gain is enabled.

I understand, if you have single files the average (LUFS) is -23dBfs
JRiver says if you habe an album, the reative level differences are kept inbetween the album.

Now if i have an album where I have 5 files:
1: -3 LUFS
2: -13 LUFS
3: -23LUFS
4: -33LUFS
5: -43LUFS

so at what level will this album play?

Individual files will all 5 play at -23LUFS, thats clear.

Peter

[pschelbert]

Hi

here whats in JRiver wiki:

Question: what is the fixed amount in an album?
___________________________
Volume Leveling

Have you ever put on an album and noticed that it was drastically louder than the last album you were listening to? Everyone has a few albums that every time you put them on you race for the volume control to turn them down. Similarly, I'm sure you've heard albums that were "too quiet" and you had to turn them up quite a bit to hear them at all (only to go racing for the volume control again when you followed them up with a loud one). This is the result of the fact that (unlike film) there's no loudness standard in audio engineering. Because louder audio is often perceived as sounding better, there has been a "loudness war" in mastering music to try and make the loudest sounding music possible, often through compression (reducing the Dynamic Range to make more of the song "loud"). One unfortunate side effect of the loudness wars is that albums have drastically varying average volume levels.

Volume Leveling is a solution to this problem. It does it by analyzing the "loudness" and dynamic range of the music (using the international standard R128 analysis method), and then adjusting the volume level of the music to a reference level. The result is that most music will sound close to the same average volume with volume leveling on. Volume leveling does not compress the music or affect dynamic range; it just changes playback volume. Volume Leveling also does not alter the audio content of files; all volume adjustment is done using DSP at runtime.

By default, when you play an album, the whole album gets adjusted by a fixed amount so that intertrack dynamics aren't affected (i.e. a "quiet" song on an album will still sound quiet compared to the rest of the album). When you play a mixed playlist, each track is adjusted individually so each track sounds about the same volume (like on the radio).

Because most music is mastered so that its peak level is close to (or sometimes even above) digital full scale, in order for volume leveling to work correctly (without clipping) most music must receive some amount of attenuation (rather than boost). This means that when you first turn it on you'll need to turn up the volume a little; but after that you'll be able to leave the volume control more or less alone.

[RD James]

Pretty sure it gets adjusted using the average loudness for the album - though the example you provided has significantly more variance than is typical.

[pschelbert]

so you say its the arithmetic avarage in dB. This would just be -23dBfs in this example.

Other guess or is it right?

Peter

[mattkhan]

That would be my guess but why guess? Just play an album and see what adjustment it makes then report back 

[pschelbert]

Hi

how do I see the gain JRiver adjusts for the whole album while playing?
I can measure at the otuput of the DAC (RME Digichck). With music this is not so easy (fluctuation of RMS..)

There sould be an internal JRiver variable to see what gain is set by JRiver during play. Where to see that?

Peter

[mattkhan]

Volume levelling adjustment is reported in audio path

[wer]

Google "jriver audio path"

[mattkhan]

I checked one album and it reported an adjustment of -14.4 with an actual average of -14.39 so that indicates it is a simple average

[pschelbert]

Hi

great, I will try that today:looking at  Audio Path
Thanks.

Peter