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Author Topic: Playlist items with varying sound levels  (Read 853 times)

Sky King

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Playlist items with varying sound levels
« on: October 07, 2021, 11:49:11 am »

Hi,

My playlists are eclectic, as most of ours probably are, and are sourced from varying artists and albums on my NAS.  Using MC, is it possible to assign different gain levels for individual songs?  If so, can it be done irrespective to the file type?  If not, other than ride the volume control constantly what is a body to do?

Any thoughts on how to "normalize" the gain across items in a playlist would be greatly appreciated!
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Doof

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Re: Dealing with Playlist items with wildly varying sound levels
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2021, 12:07:35 pm »

Good news! MC can analyze the audio on all of your files (even video although it takes a really long time) and then apply volume normalization for you.

First, make sure your audio files have all been analyzed. It's possible MC did this automatically during import but you can verify by selecting them all, right click (or choose the Tools menu) -> Library Tools -> Analyze Audio

If you see a bunch of numbers in all the columns then they've likely all been analyzed already but you can still run it with the "Skip analyzed files" option checked to be sure.

Once that's done, go to the Player menu and choose DSP Studio. In here enable the Volume Leveling option, and optionally the Adaptive Volume option if you want.
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Sky King

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Re: Dealing with Playlist items with wildly varying sound levels
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2021, 12:27:03 pm »

That's excellent news!  Just to be sure, as I understand it, DSP studio only functions or is available on the computer, a Windows 10 HTPC in my case, on which the sound is output to via analog, USB or whatever sound card is available.  Are the "normalized" songs available to other devices that are remoted into MC either via JRemote or another computer that is using the remote library as well?

Again, thanks for the quick response!

Joe
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Doof

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Re: Dealing with Playlist items with wildly varying sound levels
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2021, 06:24:08 pm »

I don't have any remote MC clients setup so take everything I say next with a grain of salt (and hopefully others that actually know what they're talking about will chime in), but my understanding is that the audio analysis data will be available to the clients via the library server, but it's up to the client to deal with it. So if the client doesn't support volume normalization, then it won't have any effect. And if the client is access the files outside of MC, like direct to a file share, then it obviously won't work.

However, there is a way to make it work 100% in any player, but it means re-writing the files themselves, so it's irreversible. If that's a concern but disk space is no obstacle, however, then you could create a duplicate of each file, one that has been normalized, and then share it from a different directory to those clients that can't do this themselves. I did something similar when I was dealing with two different non-MC players, one that could play FLAC, but the other could only play WMA lossless. Thankfully MC gives you numerous ways to manage your files so coping with multiple versions isn't too troublesome.

To do that, you can use Tools -> Library Tools -> Convert Format. Choose whatever settings you like for encoder and then click Options to set preferences for whether or not to replace the original on disk - I'd recommend setting this to "Leave original file; add destination file to library". Then check the box for "Apply DSP" and, assuming you've done the Audio Analysis and have DSP Studio configured to apply Volume Normalization, when MC converts the files they'll all have that level applied to them and will therefore play at the same level in any player. MC allows you to do this automatically when you transfer files to a portable player or burn an audio CD as well, btw.
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Striker

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Re: Dealing with Playlist items with wildly varying sound levels
« Reply #4 on: October 07, 2021, 08:26:40 pm »

Good news! MC can analyze the audio on all of your files (even video although it takes a really long time) and then apply volume normalization for you.

First, make sure your audio files have all been analyzed. It's possible MC did this automatically during import but you can verify by selecting them all, right click (or choose the Tools menu) -> Library Tools -> Analyze Audio

If you see a bunch of numbers in all the columns then they've likely all been analyzed already but you can still run it with the "Skip analyzed files" option checked to be sure.

Once that's done, go to the Player menu and choose DSP Studio. In here enable the Volume Leveling option, and optionally the Adaptive Volume option if you want.

Volume Leveling is way better than not using it... however, I still have to manually adjust volume between some tracks.

While I have no way of proving it... I "think" the old ReplayGain worked better.
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Sky King

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Re: Playlist items with varying sound levels
« Reply #5 on: October 09, 2021, 06:54:50 am »

Thanks to Doof and Striker.  Disk space is not an issue so I may just create normalized files for my playlisted files at least.

Because I don't know much about file formats, metadata, etc., one other question I have is does the simply act of changing volume levels do anything to affect other parameters of the file that could affect sound quality such as frequency response, etc., or are the files immune to other changes when normalization is applied?
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Skeezix

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Re: Playlist items with varying sound levels
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2021, 11:18:40 pm »

Also, I applied "volume level" to all of my MP3 files. Then...

1. If I burn them to CD as MP3 files, will the volume level be copied to the newly written files? and

2. If I simply Windows Explorer to copy the MP3 files to CD, will the volume level be copied to those files?
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Sky King

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Re: Playlist items with varying sound levels
« Reply #7 on: October 22, 2021, 05:58:15 am »

Also, I applied "volume level" to all of my MP3 files. Then...

1. If I burn them to CD as MP3 files, will the volume level be copied to the newly written files? and

2. If I simply Windows Explorer to copy the MP3 files to CD, will the volume level be copied to those files?
Good questions all!  Give it a try and let us know what you find out!
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Skeezix

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Re: Playlist items with varying sound levels
« Reply #8 on: October 23, 2021, 12:50:13 pm »

Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with all the details of MC to find out if MP3 files that are burned to a CD or that are simply copied to a CD have Volume Leveling applied. I just listen (i.e. go to sleep while they are playing) to the files.

How can I find out if Volume Leveling has been applied to files burned or copied to a CD?
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Sky King

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Re: Playlist items with varying sound levels
« Reply #9 on: October 23, 2021, 01:21:21 pm »

Possibly by listening to the same track "pressed" to a CD and one that you stream via MC.  Good question however.
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Dawgincontrol

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Re: Playlist items with varying sound levels
« Reply #10 on: October 24, 2021, 11:07:43 am »

Under Options>Conversion>Audio from the small box with the transfer button in the tree, you can select Apply DSP (volume leveling, equalization,etc.). 

This will apply the settings to the burned disk for playback.
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