Look here:
I was thinking out loud of a theoretically possible way to achieve the goal of volume leveling on the fly, at download or soon thereafter. If this calculation could be achieved and was then sent to the Roon cloud storage, others would be able to ‘use it’ and not suffer the latency (this was conceived by @ToneDeaf, giving credit where due and it’s an excellent idea)
How Qobuz/Roon get there does not matter ultimately. While listening to Roon Radio, adding Qobuz to the mix with Tidal and my local library, I experience jumps in volume of +10dB. I can tolerate 2-3dB but even that is rather annoying to me.
…to continue the thought…if the entire track is downloaded before playback it would be possible to calc R128 data. After observing the transfer that occurs when selecting a track on Qobuz I can see that it does burst the download upwards of 80Mbps on my network but does run for some number of seconds, ~20+ in some cases, and then drops to effectively zero.
The only really good answer here is to get Qobuz to do this [create volume leveling data] on their end.
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Why should this be the only good answer? Roon is able and does without explicitly asking me display different metadata than what comes from Qobuz but is unable to add the value for volume leveling? Maybe it cannot be done 100% correct and for all albums. But as I’m in general happy with the metadata Roon provides I would also be happy with what Roon would propose as volume leveling for most cases.
It’s not as simple as just adding the value for volume leveling. That value must be calculated. To do that, you need have the track local so a program can read the file to calculate the R128 volume leveling value. Now, for Roon to supply that information, they would have to have a local copy of every album on Qobuz AND calculate all the R128 values for the album and individual tracks. Qobuz is not going to allow that and I don’t think Roon would want to undertake that task.
Do you now see why Qobuz needs to be the one to do this?
Hello @Speed_Racer. Thanks for clarifying.
Yes, it appears entirely possible that it gets too cumbersome. I certainly don’t have the insight to judge if it’s mathematically even possible to do the calculations without keeping all or most of a file temporarily around in one iteration. The suggestion I made, even ignoring other issues, also wasn’t really addressing album gain, I suppose?
I can also understand that the thought of significant buffering on end-user equipment just for the purpose of gain offset calculation is likely not something that either Qobuz or Roon would entertain. Or only in their litigation nightmare scenario’s. Hmmm.
All that being true, we are probably back to pleading 
with Qobuz, as the OP has done. It seems IMO actually a bit odd that, being in the audiophile market with their flac streaming, they have not identified this as a significant requirement or selling point. Is it really such a minority thing?
@ToneDeaf - I certainly would think that Qobuz would want to provide this information to Roon even if only because Tidal does. Apple Music and Spotify also use R128 for volume leveling on their services. I am pretty sure Amazon uses the R128 information for volume leveling too. It seems to be a no brainer and it makes no sense that Qobuz is not playing ball.
Qobuz does not do volume levelling at all this is why the data is not available, none of their own apps support it, I think they have said they don’t want to adjust the originals files at all so apply no leveling. So the likely hood of this happening is slim unless they have a change of hear. Tidals native apps all support volume levelling so it was already part of their service for Roon to get the info.
According to Dylan from Roon, back in May, Qobuz had started sending volume levelling through to them.
I can certainly understand that as your post contains a quote from ROON (albeit 6 months old) it s taken as the truth. I wish that was the case. Unfortunately it is simply not true.
I have a limited number of Qobuz albums at this time (45) and none of them contain Volume Leveling data.
Still waiting for @support to respond as well as receive a reply to my email from Quboz.
So far, the silence from both is disappointing.
Qobuz responded to me: ‘Unfortunately we are not planning to implement this feature in the foreseeable future, sorry for disappointing news.’
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No, I do not see why Qobuz should deliver something on maybe 5-8 million albums they do not consider important (they want to deliver original mastered material without leveling). If Roon wants to offer this feature they need to deliver the ingredients. Even if Qobuz would send to Roon a database with x-million album titles and the appropriate R128 data, who in Roon would want to update their database with that info? Impossible. I think this call about someone providing all that data at once is too short thought. What might work is to start delivering on incremental portions, as I believe it is done by the streaming companies Tidal and Qobuz on weekly basis. It already takes Roon one day to implement this incremental data into Roon. Therefore the Friday listening of new Albums for me goes with other apps like Devialet Spark or the Qobuz app as Roon is very late with new data. So, imagine how would Roon stem to add the leveling values for x-million albums to their database correctly and timely? For me your request towards Qobuz is simply unrealistic and not fully sound.
Thanks for that. I mainly use Tidal and Qobuz (I keep going back and forth) for roon radio. This makes Qobuz pretty much unusable for that. Guess it’s back to Tidal, where MQA is the lesser evil.
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If not Qobuz, then who? Roon? Roon as the answer makes way less sense than Qobuz…
Aside from opinions from ROON subscribers, there are several documented statements from ROON support and Qobuz that frankly conflict with one another.
As a refresher, ROON support, several times in the past 9 months, offered a narrative that can be summarized as follows: Qobuz has a catalog of millions of tracks and is adding Volume Leveling information daily- it is a work in progress.
Qobuz has informed another subscriber that they have no plans to provide Volume Leveling in the foreseeable future.
Yesterday, I received the following response from Qobuz “Thanks for your email. That is no(t) a function we currently offer. I’m going to send your great suggestion to our Dev team now for consideration for a future update. However I cannot provide a timeline for you.”
As a matter of truth, these statements cannot coexist.
ROON support has been recently silent on this, therefore one is left to speculate as to why ROON has historically claimed that Qobuz Volume Leveling is a “work in progress” when it clearly is not.
For me, I will determine my continuing subscription to Qobuz significantly based upon whether Volume Leveling data is provided in the future. I am not holding my breath.
Finally, although my experience with ROON has been overwhelmingly positive, I feel mislead by their statements in this matter. I signed up for Qobuz less than a week ago in no small part based upon ROON assuring subsribers that Volume Leveling is present in some Qobuz tracks, more were being added every day- that it is a work in progress. I believed ROON.
Misinformation is worse than no information. The older I get the more I appreciate the subtle, the fine tuning, the refinement in things and work and life.
Volume leveling done well, as I find Roon does, is one of the refinements that I’ve become accustomed to and don’t want to compromise. If I’d never had the pleasure of using it for years and I probably wouldn’t care. It’s one of those ‘things’ that isn’t fully appreciated until it’s gone.
I too do not plan to continue my Qobuz trial into a subscription mostly because of this lacking. Tidal serves me well via Roon. I know Roon corporate really doesn’t lose anything by me (or anyone) not subscribing to Qobuz.
I wish more attention was paid to the refinement of Roon vs. feature creep but then I and all of us are simply the classic arm chair quarterback, are we not
The plot thickens. Over on Audiophile Style, a Qobuz rep says:
Q: Someone on the roon forum said Qobuz told them Qobuz does not have volume leveling info and had no plans to provide it. Is that the official Qobuz response?
A (Qobuz rep): Nope all the volume leveling info for our catalog should be delivered to Roon by beginning of next month. And all new releases going forward have it.
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I think streaming services are subject to the same legislation as the rest of the broadcast industry, so I expect loudness normalisation will come to Qobuz eventually. But I wouldn’t like to guess when. It’s a work in progress across the industry while they work out how to get to -23 LUFS without upsetting too many people along the way.
Edit: Or perhaps I’ll guess ‘beginning of next month’…
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Based on the posts on Audiophile Style linked to here a few posts back, you may have jumped the gun in accusing Roon of malfeasance. The statements from that Qobuz rep include:
“Nope all the volume leveling info for our catalog should be delivered to Roon by beginning of next month. And all new releases going forward have it.”
“That is correct, this data is only being sent to Roon.”
“This will be added after on Qobuz Application, and will be available on the API.”
Note that the last quote was provided by a second Qobuz rep…David Craff. He is Qobuz Product Manager for Desktop, Web Player and Search Engine. He might just know of what he speaks!!
Now, those statements sound rather definitive. Maybe everyone should take a step back and let the process continue.
I am so glad that I don’t use volume leveling…at all!
I simply reported what information had been provided by ROON and Qobuz (as recently as yesterday). No accusation was made, I just pointed out the contradictions. I stand by my comment pointing to ROON’s recent silence on the matter.
If Qobuz is going to provide the data that is something to celebrate- perhaps they should inform their support staff who state otherwise…
I you don’t use Volume Leveling, why even opine on the subject?