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[vulture_g7]

Volume leveling in MC is simply excellent, but unless I'm missing something, there's a scenario which invalidates it. Say you begin playing audio with a playlist of 5 tracks and you're adding as it plays on. Volume will drop or rise depending on the added tracks' loudness. How about having an additional option of static overall loudness? Everything played should respect that given number of db set in there. I suppose it should be mutually exclusive to the current leveling model to function without conflicts, maybe it could reside in the same options page and they'd grey out one another.

[RD James]

Enabling Volume Leveling and disabling Adaptive Volume should do what you want, if the tracks are analyzed.

[vulture_g7]

I'll try that, thank you. I think I had tried it and still had the same problem, but I'll check it out again.

[vulture_g7]

Adaptive volume really doesn't solve this problem, volume still increases/decreases as tracks are added to the list.

[RD James]

As the name suggests, adaptive volume is adaptive.
Volume Leveling targets the same level for all tracks.
 
There are some exceptions to that rule however.
Albums are treated as a single entity for leveling, so the average level for an album is used in order to preserve intended track-to-track volume levels.
 
If you only have leveling enabled, the level shouldn't be changing based on what is in the playlist - with the exception of sequential album tracks.

[vulture_g7]

Yes, I think we're saying the same thing here. Here are the cases I've tried, all tracks are analyzed:
- Volume levelling + Adaptive Volume
- Volume levelling no Adaptive volume
- Adaptive volume no Volume levelling
None of those keeps a constant volume level as tracks keep being added to the list.
Unless I'm missing something, the only real solution to this would be a constant loudness target all analyzed tracks should be respecting. Please let me know if I'm doing something obviously wrong here. Thx!

[~OHM~]

most changes made in MC need to have playback stopped and restarted.....just saying

[RD James]

None of those keeps a constant volume level as tracks keep being added to the list.

Volume Leveling with no Adaptive Volume should be keeping a consistent volume level as it has a fixed target of -23 LUFS.
The only thing which should affect this is if you are playing random tracks and start adding tracks from the same album next to each other in the playlist.
Tracks from the same album use the average volume level to preserve intended differences or things like crossfades.

[mattkhan]

most changes made in MC need to have playback stopped and restarted.....just saying

there are lots of bits of DSP studio that do not need a playback restart, output format and convolution are the 2 obvious ones that are sensitive to this. I think everything else in there takes effect on the fly, certainly volume levelling and adaptive volume do. Note that "on the fly" can still entail a fair bit of lag (depends on audio device buffers).

[~OHM~]

yup....just saying

[vulture_g7]

I am pretty sure I did add a couple of tracks from the same album, maybe that's what breaks it then. I'll try it again and report back. Thx!

[Vocalpoint]

I do wish that MC would allow the ability to set Volume Normalization targets to reflect different services now available. For example - Spottify normalizes everything to -14 LUFS, Apple Music to -16 LUFS and so on.

Would be nice to be able to have Volume Leveling be flexible to use additional industry standards other than -23 LUFS (which is fairly useless for modern music).

I realize I could futz about and add gain to my chain - but I would love it if I could simple right click on an album and when I run Analyze Audio - have MC automatically analyze to the Spotify standard (-14 LUFS) or Apple Music (-16LUFS) based on what I where I would like the overall volume levelling to be.

VP

[RD James]

I do wish that MC would allow the ability to set Volume Normalization targets to reflect different services now available. For example - Spottify normalizes everything to -14 LUFS, Apple Music to -16 LUFS and so on.

Would be nice to be able to have Volume Leveling be flexible to use additional industry standards other than -23 LUFS (which is fairly useless for modern music).

I realize I could futz about and add gain to my chain - but I would love it if I could simple right click on an album and when I run Analyze Audio - have MC automatically analyze to the Spotify standard (-14 LUFS) or Apple Music (-16LUFS) based on what I where I would like the overall volume levelling to be.

VP

-23 LUFS is a part of the R128 spec, not an arbitrary decision.
I'm not sure why you think that -23 LUFS is "fairly useless" since the point is that it provides enough headroom that the majority of music will never be driven to clipping - which means no uneven leveling no matter the track being played.
 
Add 9 dB volume in the parametric EQ if you want to target -14 LUFS; but you will have more uneven leveling.
Add this as an expression column (or expression category) to evaluate your library with a target of -14 LUFS:

Code: [Select]

If(Compare(Math([Volume Level (R128),0] + RemoveCharacters(ListItem([Peak Level (R128),0], 0), / +dBTP)), <,
Math(-1 - (23 -14))),
No Clipping, <font color="ff0000">Clipping<//font>)

You can change "Math(-1 - (23 -14)))," to any target level that you would like to test.

With my library:

-14 LUFS target: 39.8% of tracks will clip.
-16 LUFS target: 20.8% of tracks will clip.
-18 LUFS target:  9.0% of tracks will clip.
-20 LUFS target:  3.6% of tracks will clip.
-23 LUFS target:  1.3% of tracks will clip.

Now Media Center won't allow the tracks to clip - it will further reduce the volume of those tracks, resulting in uneven leveling.
While there are still tracks that will be pushed to clipping at the -23 LUFS target, it's a very small number, and the lower the target level is, the less clipping protection is going to be.
 
If I restrict it to only albums released in the last 15 years - which should be "modern" enough to mostly suffer from a reduced dynamic range, those numbers are:

-14 LUFS: 29.7%
-16 LUFS: 14.7%
-18 LUFS:  6.4%
-20 LUFS:  2.4%
-23 LUFS:  0.7%

So it is "improved" if you only consider modern mastering, but not as dramatically as you might think. -14 LUFS is still going to play 1/3 of tracks outside of the leveling target.
 
The reason that services like Spotify and iTunes will be using higher leveling targets is because they have millions of users and have no idea of what hardware they're going to be listening on.
-23 LUFS is probably "too quiet" for people that listen to music on their notebook, or tiny bluetooth speakers etc.

[Vocalpoint]

-23 LUFS is a part of the R128 spec, not an arbitrary decision.

I am very familar with the "standards" and understand where and why -23 LUFS is used.

I'm not sure why you think that -23 LUFS is "fairly useless" since the point is that it provides enough headroom that the majority of music will never be driven to clipping - which means no uneven leveling no matter the track being played.

Because it's a broadcast standard and...

-23 LUFS is probably "too quiet" for people that listen to music on their notebook, or tiny bluetooth speakers etc.

You nailed it right here....-23 LUFS is not useful for today's standard environments. No one is listening in broadcast facilities (except for maybe me) nor is the majority of today's active listeners concerned with headroom. I agree that they should be - but they never will be.

And I am not saying I want my music to be clipping - but I would like the overall LUFS level to be my choice. Having everything levelled to -23 LUFS is not exactly useful when the bulk of the other services out there are -16 or -14, -13 LUFS.

I consider -14/-13 LUFS to be the optimum loudness level for almost everything now. It is just right without being overbearing. I use this reference for all car CD mixes now and it is perfect.

And I disagree with your "39.8% of tracks will clip" calculation. I routinely apply a -14 LUFS normalization routine to tracks with Wavelab (for CD mixes) and zero tracks clip. So I am not sure where you are getting this from. In Wavelab I can set the loudness normalization value (-14LUFS) and the true peak value (-1.0db). No track can clip.

VP

[RD James]

You nailed it right here....-23 LUFS is not useful for today's standard environments. No one is listening in broadcast facilities (except for maybe me) nor is the majority of today's active listeners concerned with headroom. I agree that they should be - but they never will be.

Most amplifiers have far too much gain as it is, so targeting -23 LUFS is not an issue for a typical home stereo / theater system.
It's only low-end portable devices where volume is a concern - and that's where these streaming services are mostly used.

And I disagree with your "39.8% of tracks will clip" calculation. I routinely apply a -14 LUFS normalization routine to tracks with Wavelab (for CD mixes) and zero tracks clip. So I am not sure where you are getting this from. In Wavelab I can set the loudness normalization value (-14LUFS) and the true peak value (-1.0db). No track can clip.

It's calculated using the loudness and true peak level from Media Center's analyzer - and that conforms to the R128 spec (their test signals measure correctly).
I'm not familiar with it, but WaveLab probably applies dynamic range compression if you're setting both a target loudness and peak level target.
Media Center only shifts the volume level up or down to match the target loudness, without compressing the dynamic range.

[Vocalpoint]

Most amplifiers have far too much gain as it is, so targeting -23 LUFS is not an issue for a typical home stereo / theater system.

True - however - we use MC in many places that have nothing to do with "home stereo". From mornings using the kitchen PC to using JRemote on a iPhone and sending to a Bose Soundlink - there are many combinations that make -23 LUFS simply unusable. For most situations - a reasonable loudness normalization level bump is much better than cranking the volume on a device.

It's calculated using the loudness and true peak level from Media Center's analyzer - and that conforms to the R128 spec (their test signals measure correctly). I'm not familiar with it, but WaveLab probably applies dynamic range compression if you're setting both a target loudness and peak level target. Media Center only shifts the volume level up or down to match the target loudness, without compressing the dynamic range.

I will have to look into what WL is doing - but I do not believe there is any compression being used - there is however an actual alteration of the audio waveform rather than simply injecting metadata into the file.

I realize that physically altering the file would not fly here.

VP

[RD James]

If it is able to adjust a track that is marked as "clipping" using that expression in Media Center to a higher loudness target, while also keeping true peaks at -1.0 LUFS, it must be using dynamic range compression.
The only alternatives are to clip (bad), or to reduce the volume level further (which is what Media Center does).
 
Since it's a broadcast-oriented tool, it would not surprise me at all if the default behavior is to apply dynamic range compression to keep the track within the range set for loudness and true peak level.