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Please normalize whole albums, not tracks.
Some albums have tracks that should have lower volume than the rest of the album. E.g. spotify:album:1QZi8laY96nhaeGSklvN4D
In that album the tracks 3-5 is one piece of music and track 4 should have lower volume (I have the real album so I can vouch for that). Therefore it is a bad idea to normalize that track and my suggestion is that you should normalize the album as a whole instead.
Alternatively you could give the listener the option to turn normalization on/off.
In that album the tracks 3-5 is one piece of music and track 4 should have lower volume (I have the real album so I can vouch for that). Therefore it is a bad idea to normalize that track and my suggestion is that you should normalize the album as a whole instead.
Alternatively you could give the listener the option to turn normalization on/off.
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This is one of the best points
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The thread you're linking to is not about the same problem. Personally I think the sound is great.
The annoying thing is when the normalization destroys the dynamics of the album, the way I tried to describe it in my first post. -
No offense Lars, but have a look at the numbers for the thread Jens linked to and you'll see that the sound isn't great.
It's OK, but nothing more.
I'd rather have albums ruined than each and every song.
Of course, the better option is the one brought up in both threads -- disable normalization. -
Inappropriate?Not sure what you mean Lars. As I understand it Spotify normalizes each track dynamically on playback, based on the average RMS of a set of tracks.
The low volume of Spotify suggests that this set of tracks is pretty big, and includes both high RMS-tracks like most pop tracks and low-RMS tracks such as jazz.
Are you suggesting that normalization should be changed to be based on the average RMS of the set of tracks from each album?
If that's the case, it would of course be an improvement to the current situation, since a pop album would not be affected by a jazz album, but you would still have the situation you describe where a few tracks on the album are low RMS. Those few tracks would bring down the volume of that album.
A visual guide to how this works (imagine the four example tracks are all from the same album):
So, while album-based normalization is clearly better than what we currently have, allowing users to selectively disable normalization completely would still be a must-have-feature.
My two cents :) -
Inappropriate?As someone who listens to mainly complete albums I would definitely want to have replaygain normalization done on album basis, not on track basis. Track-based normalization is good for radio-type listening, where you rarely listen to more than one track from any one album back-to-back, but when listening to complete albums there are now many albums have their dynamics ruined by incorrectly applied replaygain. Those silent tracks are meant to be silent! At least album normalization could be an option, now that there is even an option for disabling normalization altogether (that is something that I will never do).
I just hope that the original music archives are done in flexible enough format that this is possible without too much hassle. If the archives have been hardcoded to use only one replaygain value, well, it's a definite design defect, which should never have been allowed. -
Inappropriate?uhm, if an album shifts in volume from one track to another, it's probably badly mastered in the first place. spotify can't change this in any way - it's up to the record label/artist to master the record properly, this making all of it's tracks to have an equal level of sound all the way through.
mastering is some tough sh*t, trust me on this.
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This is one of the best points
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Nope. Some artist still make real albums instead of just collection of unrelated songs, and these albums may even flow uninterrupted from one track to another. There may be some tracks that are intentionally even 10dB quieter than others. They may be interludes or just softer parts. In these cases track-based volume normalization can change the volume level of even sustained note that carries on from one track to another, and it sounds just wrong. This seems to be especially common with short intro or outro tracks.
Brickwall mastering is one thing that has been trying to destroy all these dynamics in the last 15 years or so. Not to mention that there are older releases that haven't been mastered to ear-bleeding volume levels, before recent remasters that is... -
you are correct sir. perhaps 'badly mastered' wasn't accurate. however, it is not up to spotify to level out entire albums.
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That's exactly what they're doing now, levelling out entire albums, even when some tracks are supposed to be quieter. That's why we're asking for an album-based volume normalization option so that while two different albums would sound to be about the same volume the dynamics within the albums would be preserved.
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well, normalization is just an added effect, made for boosting the sound as much possible. you set it at one level, and it gets the job done. also remember that a major part of the original dynamics are already gone, due to the compressed ogg vorbis-format in which the tracks are streamed in. i personally prefer to have it switched off. seems pointless to add normalization to an album if you are keen to preserve it's dynamics.
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@nicolasso
normalization != audio compression, data compression != audio compression. -
sorry, but normalization is NOT audio compression. that's why it's called normalization, and not compression. two completely different things.
"Normalization is a special type of amplification. The idea here is to uniformly alter the entire audio file such that the loudest peak in the file is at maximum volume (or else something slightly below that). That is, the entire file is amplified by the same amount to get the highest peak at maximum volume." (http://librivox.org/wiki/moin.cgi/Aud...)
a compressor works both ways, both lowering peaks and amplifying parts that are quieter. -
@nicolasso
Great, then we agree. The symbol "!=" is computer speak for "not equals". -
Technically this replaygain type volume normalization isn't normalization in the sense the term is usually used with digital audio, i.e. normalizing the amplitude so that the amplitude peaks use all of the available dynamic range of the audio format. This kind of basic amplitude normalization doesn't often change the perceived volume much, especially if the audio data has already been compressed (in the dynamics sense, as is done in CD mastering, not size compression) to be loud. Instead, replaygain algorithms statistically analyze the overall perceived volume level and then basically act as an automated volume knob that turns down very loud albums. Dynamic range doesn't change or audio quality doesn't degrade (unless the album was very, very quiet, then making it louder might in theory cause some clipping), it's just like changing the volume, except it's done automatically.
Some people don't like replaygain, because with volume normalization contemporary rock albums will sound a lot quieter than they used to. Modern way of mastering CDs is to make them very loud by compressing the dynamics, often even going as far as actually degrading the audio quality (just look around the internet for the discussion about Metallica's Death Magnetic), that's why many modern CD productions sound very flat and tiring compared to releases of the 80s, the time before the loudness wars, especially when compared at comparable volumes (which can be done with e.g. volume normalization). -
Inappropriate?There's an option to turn of normalization now, please use that if you care about the original dynamics of the recording.
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this is one of the best points
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This is one of the best points
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It still doesn't fix the original problem, very different volume levels on different albums, that can be easily fixed. My loudest CD is almost 17dB louder than my quietest CD. I care about my hearing and really don't like if a loud album happens to come after a quiet album when using headphones. It is totally possible to have two different replaygain values (one for track gain, one for full album gain) associated to each track, my own album archive has used them both, depending on whether I listen to full albums or random tracks, for seven years. If something is going to be done it's best done correctly (both replaygain options available), instead of leaving undone (disabling replaygain).
