Adverts are too loud

Hi Andres,

I think the advert volume itself is okay, it's because the music is quiet in comparison that causes the problem. So yes it's all the ads, but it's not the ads themselves, if you see what I mean?

If the music volume were higher it wouldn't be so pronounced.

Thanks

Matthew

This is interesting. I've had the opposite reaction: for my listening habits adverts are well normalized in comparison to the volume of the music. I've been very happy about this, since it is good in contrast to normal radio-adverts.

What kind of music do you normally listen to on Spotify? For me it is a mixture of mostly rock and metal as well as some current club/dance music. The perceived loudness of these genres might be much higher than the music you normally listen to though.

Yes I've just noticed that some tracks are louder. I don't think it's down to the genre or audio compression (I don't mean MP3 vs OGG, I mean compression as in audio processing).

Older tracks seem to be quieter, and the volume sometimes seems to fade in and out which I assume is due to congestion - I was testing our ADSL service at the time, I'm back to 10Mbit now and volume is consistent.

This is going to require some more listening to really pin it down to what is really going on.

Andres,

Okay, I acknowledge that. I would say that a normalisation feature could solve the problem so long as it is also applied to audio for adverts, but apparently you're already working on that!

So I think we're agreed that it's just that the adverts are compressed to within an inch of their lives and depending on what you are listening to otherwise they can seem quite loud.

As for fading in and out, I'll keep an eye on that.

All in all an excellent service, I'm telling all my friends and associates about Spotify. More free music than you can handle for the occational 30 second advert? Brilliant!

Matthew

LOL.
Real pippirull moment there.
For any Swedes there, check out http://open.spotify.com/track/1bppp5B...

Just had to throw this random tidbit in here ;)

Regarding problems related to volume:

http://brendancooper.com/2008/10/21/a...

I also feel like the volume on all songs are one step below normal volume compared to any other sounds coming from my computer. If I use foobar2000 to listen to music I have my amplifier on volume "20", but with Spotify I need to set it to at least "25" to get the same amount of sound out of my speakers. Just an example.

If you check out the link posted above You’ll understand why.

http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/to...

I have been mostly listening to classical choral music, which tends to have quite a large dynamic range throughout the track, but generally ends quite quietly (especially a capella singing), so I do notice the ads being pretty loud. Incidentally, if I then have to turn down the volume for the ad, I'll turn it right down so I don't have to listen to it - which I guess is not what the Spotify team want to happen!

Ads in general are ok for a free service, but if users are annoyed of them because they are too frequent or because the are much too loud than it's very contraproductive to what ads should bring about!

For those saying the music volume is too quiet, try going to your Preferences, and user "Sound", untick the "Enable volume normalization".

I found that this helped, although some songs will vary in volume, but the overall loudness should be higher, at least it is for me.

I also feels like the sound quality is better, but that is probably just because it's louder.

Andreas: Well... from what i read, the music actually is too quiet, and that is the problem, because then you increase the volume on your speakers, and then when there is an ad, that is actually in normal volume, it's way to high, because you have turned up the volume too much on your speakers.

The ads where a "clock" appears to count the ads down, IS too LOUD!

Ok, let me try to lighten up this topic.

Music from different periods of time, or new music but different styles, have very different “RMS”-level. The RMS (Root Mean Square) level is (more or less) a measure of the perceived volume of music (or sound). Modern music generally have a high RMS-level since the material is heavily compressed (not talking about mp3 or ogg now...) and limited to get as high “level” as possible so the track will be able to compete with others when played in public media. This has lead to what’s called “the loudness war” in the industry. The tricky thing is that the “peak” –level of songs is the same (within a decibel =close to 0dB) so there’s no way of making the soft songs louder without adding compression or limiting and thereby affecting the sonic character of the song. The only correct way of implementing “volume normalization” (eliminating volume differences between songs) is to lower the playback volume of the songs with a high RMS level (the RMS level of each song is imbedded in the metadata of the track, the application reads it and adjusts the playback level to compensate for level variations). This technique has some other drawbacks witch you can read about here:

http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/to...

Luckily, the Spotify team listened to the users and added the possibility to turn off “Level normalization” and that’s really good (thank you Spotify) but, what they also did, was to apply a limiter that enabled them to increase the playback level when “level normalization” is turned on. This would be ok if the user could choose to turn it off. Personally, I don’t care that much about the limiter since I don’t use the “level normalization” feature (I want as good quality as possible) but I find the situation funny that people are listening to music that is limited once more in the player and not being aware of it.

So, what about the commercials?

Well, if you listen to an old recording or a new one but with a low RMS level like symphony or some jazz, the commercial will probably have a higher RMS level and play louder, especially if the “level normalization” feature is turned off. If you listen to modern rock, the commercial will appear normal or maybe even low in level if not over compressed and limited. I don’t know how Spotify behaves when the “level normalization” is turned on but I hope that it treats the commercials like any other song when it comes to playback level.

The malibu and mcdonalds adverts seem to be particular noise offenders at the moment. The loudness seems to be the same as the loudest point of the music. If anything the adverts should be slightly quieter than the music to smooth the transition and avoid that jarring sensation which puts me off some adverts immediately..

TV adverts on commercial channels have often amplified their adverts by a significant amount compared to their content, and of course it is designed to attract attention, but it often works the other way, and I dont think this is a good approach for spotify - these methods should be beneath you.. Spotify has the opportunity to integrate advertising in a new and more sophisticated way and shouldnt blow it with shouty ads.

I really wish something could be done about this problem. When I listen to classical music it is really a huge pain, "lighter" fare - usually not that horrible.

Since the ads seem to be at least somewhat targeted (both based on location and perhaps also listening habits? At least I get proportionally quite a lot of ads for "more grown-up" (or downright geriatric...) music), couldn't the loudness of them also be adjusted?

It is probably impossible to make a 100% accurate system, but it should be possible to make it much better than it is now. Toning down the loudness for ads in between everything classical and/or pre 1970 shouldnt't be impossible.

And even better would be:
- an option to ONLY get ads without music in them, even for just a limited time (2-4 hours or so).
- A like/dislike button for ads (like facebook has). This one should actually be quite useful for advertisers, too. Especially if you make it so that to get rid of an especially annoying ad you would have to specify exactly what it is about it that rubs you the wrong way.

I also constantly experience this issue, I find myself listening to many different types of music, everything from classical, jazz and folk to metal and contemporary pop. When listening to the first three genres generally the adverts are WAY too loud, I mean in a way that without doubt can permanently degrade ones hearing in certain situations.
If I've understood everything right, the "normalisation"-feature in Spotify works in real-time. Why not "simply" (probably not that simple) add a similar rms comparison feature that dynamically adapts the volume of the ad to match that of the last played song.

Half a year ago this was simply a bit annoying, during recent months I became reluctant to using Spotify and today was the first time I actually considered uninstalling it completely because of this problem, so please, do something about this sound pollution.
After all, I would as far as I could avoid buying the products advertised because of this and that can't be the mening of advertisment could it?

(I'm in Finland and the "external" ads are the worst, but also the Spotify infomercials are a bit on the loud side)