Quick Q: Can someone assure me, That setting adaptive Volume will only affect, Videos, and not music playback??
I think Adaptive Volume should only affect video, with audio being controlled by ReplayGain. (Volume Levelling DSP)
For what it's worth, replaygain's calibration (as implemented in JRiver) is designed to match up with the movie audio calibration standard (83 dB at -20dB pink noise). I currently use replaygain on audio and have adaptive volume entirely off in a stereo setup, and the levels between regular audio tracks and films (even 5.1 films) are pretty even on my system (usually within a few dB because I use album gain instead of track gain, but it's never startling).
It's usually more of a problem when switching between 5.1/7.1 films and 2.0 films/downloaded videos (e.g. YouTube content which isn't mastered to anything and can be louder than the stereo track on a film) than it is when switching over to ReplayGained music. (which is quieter)
From doing a quick, highly unscientific test, comparing the volume of a track off the Tron Legacy soundtrack CD with Album Gain enabled (-9.6dB) I have to turn up the volume 50% (15/100) to have the JRSS 7.1 downmix roughly match, and 100% (20/100) when using a custom downmix in LAV Audio.
(support for custom downmixes in the JRiver Audio path would nice; a standard downmix discards LFE) JRSS does include LFE.Going from the JRSS mix to ReplayGained music is
too loud, though not startling. Going from the LAV Audio mix to music is
far too loud. And it gets worse if it was a particularly quiet film - sometimes I have volume up at 25/100, or even 30/100, rather than 20/100.
And it gets worse still when you go from a quiet 5.1 DVD (maybe 25/100) to a stereo menu that is playing music in the background or another video that is in Stereo - because that is
not ReplayGained so there's a much bigger jump in volume.
When I used to use adaptive volume, I got pretty different results between media types, which is why I stopped using it. Do you still get drastically different levels with replaygain on and adaptive audio off?
I don't personally use Adaptive Volume, I suggested it because it seemed like it should at least help normalize the volume of these music videos - but not necessarily bring them in line with ReplayGained music.
Like OP, I would love something replaygain-like for those kinds of things, but I understand that might be easier said than done.
I agree, it would be a great feature to have; it just might be tricky to actually measure a whole film's soundtrack, and I don't know how iso files would be handled.
ReplayGain aside though, because the downmixes are using normalization, you should be able to calculate the exact gain difference between a 2.0/5.1/7.1 audio track and play them at the same level.
This won't fix loud/quiet mastering, or bring it into line with ReplayGained music, but would at least stop the problem of volume jumping up when going back to the menus or playing a stereo video after a 5.1/7.1 video.