Questions about Volume Levelling

Roon Software Discussion
62

So, there should be a Volume leveling value difference of 9 dB between the -14 LUFS and -23 LUFS settings. But there is only a 5.2 dB difference [1.2 - (-4) = 5.2]. That is 3.8 dB of Volume leveling unable to be applied.

The reason is Roon’s Volume leveling will not amplify into digital clipping. And that affects a lot of higher dynamic range recordings on the -14 LUFS setting — those recordings simply cannot have enough gain added to reach -14 LUFS without clipping.

If you want Roon’s Volume leveling to work optimally, you need to set it to around -23 LUFS. That will ensure nearly all recordings have negative value Volume leveling adjustments. The digital clipping limit will not come into play, and overall more consistent Volume leveling.

AJ

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63

The difference is actually 3.2dB, which is worse.

64

Oops, right. I glanced too quickly at the Signal path and grabbed the second Headroom adjustment figure instead of the second Volume leveling figure.

Here is the math again:

[1.2 - (-2.0)] = 3.2

And that is bad, since the difference should be 9 dB. One recording is effectively 6 dB louder than the other because of inadequate -14 LUFS Volume leveling.

AJ

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65

@Torben_Rick - I think the bottom line here is that you need to use a -23LUFS (or maybe even lower) target to give Roon a chance. You seem to have a number of recordings in your library with especially low ‘average’ loudness levels, but with high peaks levels. I don’t think switching to Replaygain tags will make any difference.

I’d set levelling to -23LUFS, turn up the gain on your amp, and forget about it for a bit. See how you feel about it next week… :slightly_smiling_face:

The BBC report I posted earlier explains why they use a -23 LUFS target for Radio 3 - which primarily broadcasts both live and recorded classical music. It’s not dissimilar to your scenario.

Edit - and I note that I can’t even read the table at the end of the report properly. R3 online has a service loudness of -27 LUFS, but should generally peak no higher than -6 LUFS.

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66

I have a vague recollection that the roon default used to be -23 LUFS. I might be miss-remembering previous versions but is there a reason the default was changed to -14 LUFS?

67

This thread answers a few questions

68

I think it was -23 LUFS too - but have since been unable to find definitive evidence! I may have only ever seen it in documentation, but could equally convince myself that I actually saw it in a menu when I first ran Roon… :man_shrugging:

69

68 posts and I can’t but wonder what @Duckworp makes of all this…

70

Well, as the OP I have found the whole thread somewhat bewildering! Here’s the thing: I love BBC Radio 3’s Night Tracks. And I use the radio show to create my own Night Tracks playlists. On Radio 3 the music on the show is seamlessly one volume. But my playlist, even though it uses the same tracks, is all over the place in volume due to the modern tracks being ‘loud’ and compressed, and the classical tracks being low in volume since classical music is rarely compressed.
So I started to mess with volume Levelling but got confused by the options and even whether the Qobuz tracks could be volume leveled. Hence I asked the question on this thread. From the replies it appears I need the “track” or “auto” option and I need to set it at -23 LUFS. But some of the answers imply this won’t fully work as the BBC do use compression, not just volume levelling, so even at -23 LUFS it appears I won’t fully be able to overcome modern compressed mastering vs traditional classical high dynamic range, low volume tracks.

Have I understood the nearly 70 replies to my question correctly?

71

Pretty much…

I’d pick ‘album’ levelling (apparently ‘most’ people prefer it, even on random-track playlists; I prefer the result even though I never use playlists… ), and although the BBC use compression on most channels, they don’t on R3. A Night Tracks playlist may not exactly match what the professionals at the BBC achieve (they have the option of manual adjustments if the automatics don’t cut it), but if you can locate the same tracks (not always easy) I think it should be close. Try it and see… :slightly_smiling_face:

Interestingly (well - I think so… ) the BBC vary the compression according to time of day and programme - drive time gets more compression because the majority of the listeners are - errr - in cars. The LRA numbers (effectively dynamic range) for each channel in the table are interesting.

Edit - to be fair, I think @Suedkiez nailed it at post #2…

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72

I missed the whole LUF -23 thing, which is interesting and of practical use (there’s more interesting stuff about this in the thread I linked a bit earlier) and I enjoyed this interesting thread here, too :slight_smile:

73

TLDR

The EBU actually recommends -23 LUFS as a target for broadcast mastering in their R128 and related documentation.

But as mastering is all over the place, and certainly will remain so, no one analyzing and leveling algorithm will ever be able to achieve a “perfect” result without applying compressors and expanders.

So, as stated in my comments, if it’s so important to one’s listening pleasure, one either has to listen to live radio stations doing the legwork to level it all out, or use tools as outlined above to do it yourself.

And funnily, this is in stark contrast to the bit perfect blackest background anti jitter audiophile tinkering partisan crowd craze.

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74

THX. The downside, I have to turn up the gain on the amp. It is not a problem in the living room, but with the headphones and DAC/AMP it could be a problem

Torben

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75

roonlabs’ code does not apply the correct level changes when leveling is turned on. It is wrong to lay the blame on replaygain algorithms, perceptual issues, or anything but roonlabs’ implementation.

I gave them fully documented examples of roon’s incorrect utilization of replaygain in 2020 and they don’t appear to have done anything to fix the problem. I had several support threads which ultimately ended with them saying that, since they can find no other examples of software players that do it correctly, they wouldn’t make changes.

See Issue ez-35: Volume leveling (track) is not working correctly

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76

This old thread ends rather abruptly with them asking for your files and no answer from you?

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@Suedkiez, rest assured I had multiple conversations with different support people over the years. I won’t post personal emails between roon support and myself in this public forum here for you.

I uploaded sample audio files for them per their request, provided links to my research, pointed them to instructions from the EBU on how replaygain is calculated and applied, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

I guess that there aren’t enough roon users who hear that leveled playback doesn’t work right that either report it or care enough about it to cause roonlabs to fix it.

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I’m not asking you to, I just wondered what happened there. OK

79

I cannot see the discussion in the thread you posted so I don’t know if it was ever tried. In your original post you have target set to -14 LUFS. Most of the discussion in this this thread has been the need to set LUFS to anything between -16 and -23 to avoid the discrepancies you see, especially with overly compressed modern masters. Did you ever experiment with different target LUFS?

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80

Roon never followed up in a private messaging/support thread in 2020 after thanking me for the report, filing an internal ticket, and saying they couldn’t commit as to when it would be fixed.

I re-oponed this in 2022. The gist of the reply was that they had no way to do a deep analysis and test it and did I know of any app they could use that does this correctly? Here is my response to that — I guess I can publicize a private message that I wrote, no?

Hi, XXXXX,

No deep analysis is required. If what your devs are missing relates to how corrections are to be applied, I’ve done the homework for you. I re-read ITU-R 1770 and EBU R128 and watched a definitive video from the chairman of the EBU committee that wrote the EBU R128 standard.

(ITU-R 1770 defines how programme loudness is measured, and EBU R128 defines how audio programmes, which in our case are audio tracks and albums, are characterized in terms of loudness, peaks, and dynamic range).

Surprisingly, neither states how to adjust a programme on playback that has one R128 loudness level (measured in LU) so that it plays back equally as loud as another with a different R128 level. One would think that you just increase or decrease the level of each, in dB, according to how much each programme departs from the target level in LUFS.

But is that correct? The standards do not say that an LU is equivalent to a dB!

So I found and watched this video presentation, EBU R128 Introduction, by Florian Camerer from an EBU conference on Oct 27, 2011. He was/is the chairman of the EBU PLOUD working group which wrote the EBU R128 standard. He discusses the new unit, LU, around 23 minutes in.

Between 23:43 and 24:13, Florian says:

So we also have new units, or new loudness measures, now, new loudness units, and we need a relative one, that is called LU, loudness units, yeah. We need a relative one to say, for instance, your programme is 3 LU louder than your program, and of course, it has to be related to a dB, so a step of one LU is a step of one dB. It’s exactly the same. So if you raise the electrical level by one dB, the loudness is raised by one LU.

If roon raises the digital level by one dB, the DAC will raise the electrical level by one dB, and eventually the SPL will increase by one dB, and thus the loudness.

So all your devs have to do is code the arithmetic right to compute the loudness normalization (correction) in dB from the R128 gain in dB and the device target volume level in LUFS. As I analyzed in my bug report, roon is not doing this correctly.

Now you have three things to enable you to fix this:

  • the benefit of my hearing the error in the calcs
  • roon’s wrong corrections in the Signal Path popup
  • the ultimate authority’s word (Florian’s) word that LU and dB are equivalent and that dB adjustments should be used for loudness normalization based on R128 gains

This is a trivial problem compared to most things roon does. And now you have an authority for what is to be done.

Hope this help!
- Eric

Again, I was thanked, and was told that the info I submitted would forwarded to the audio team and they’d follow up. That never happened. So that’s that.

- Eric

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81

Thanks Eric - Value information

Torben