Recently started using Roon and have been mostly happy with it so far, but am still exploring the features.
I am running the new Mac mini M1 as both a Roon and Plex server.
When setting up the Roon Core on the Mac Mini I accidentally created to paths to the same folder for my Music library (shown in picture). I discovered this by looking at the Versions tab in phone app. I noticed that some albums have different dynamic range readings (a couple examples shown in pictures), which I found odd because the are the same file on my hard drive. What causes this?
Hi @Jon_Bluebond and welcome to the Roon forum. That’s a good one, they’re the same file but what was the gap between the creation of the first version and the addition of the second? I wonder because the dynamic range is calculated and recorded when the file’s added and if there was some change to the DR algorithm between the events then that might explain it. Another possibility is that not all DR algorithms are deterministic, so a stochastic randomiser means that you’re not guaranteed the same answer. That said the variation’s pretty big so the second idea seems somewhat fanciful.
Both possibilities are just a guess and it maybe something else completely.
No time at all between file creation. They are the same file (one is not a copy of the other). I accidentally linked to the same folder twice when setting up my Roon library. The only delay was in Roon analyzing the file a second time (which has been less than 24 hours).
And yes, my thought was that Roon was taking samples of the tracks when doing the DR analysis. That just doesn’t seem like a very effective way to do it.
Roon calculates a rolling average loudness/dynamic range figure per album that changes as it analyzes additional tracks. Ensure that Roon has completed initial audio analysis on all tracks and albums in question before comparing metrics.
Thanks! After a couple of days I checked again, and this seems to be the solution. The dynamic ranges are the same now. I must have been looking before all the songs on the album were analyzed.
You should note that even though Roon calls these numbers “dynamic range”, these numbers are actually the “loudness range”. Even the EBU R128 standard specifically says the number is not a dynamic range value.
