Theoretically, I found roon’s volume leveling for streaming is actually the best way to control the volume of whole system, way better than any preamp
It’s done by calculating after upsampling, so it wound’t hurt the original data
For my ear, the background significantly darker.
I mean Volume adjustment when loudness is unknown for streaming service
Anyone have the same feeling?
or any discussion?
Lots of discussion if you search the forum for volume leveling.
A valued forum member did measurements and indeed it is very good:
The only thing I am wondering is it possible to do volume adjustment for local files in volume leveling?
Yes, volume leveling (or other volume adjustments in Roon‘s DSP) are applied on the audio stream after decoding and it makes no difference if the FLAC file was streamed from Qobuz or from a local disk.
In the Qobuz/Tidal case, the necessary analysis of loudness in the files is done by the streaming provider, while for local files it is done by Roon when you import the files.
For local files you can see even more of the information, like the dynamic range value and the visual wave form
Thanks for answering my question.
but what I need is do the same thing for local files without get into Target volume level.
I don’t understand what you are trying to do there
Lower and lock the volume and do this thing only.
Target volume lock the loudness of every songs, which is not what I want.
You don’t need to change the target volume to use volume levelling, but there does need to be a target volume to match against. Just pick how you want it to work and it will do the rest, for both local and streamed music. The four settings work as follows:
Off (no effect).
Auto (operates at album level when playing an album, but works on a track by track basis when using a playlist).
Track (levels all tracks)
Albums (levels at the album level, so doesn’t change an album track with respect to another track on the same album).
In Roon there is a dynamic feature called Volume Leveling that adjusts the volume so all songs you play will have the same loudness.
EDIT:
For files you can use SoundNormalizer but you have to buy a license.
Best DrCWO
Looks like you misunderstand what I meant.
What I want is not normalize every songs I play, but lower the volume for all the songs, just like a fixed fader.
Do you want to fade all FLAC files on your Hard Drive or all Songs you play via Roon?
For FLAC file volume change SoundNormalizer is your friend. You also can use custom values with it and don’t have to use the normalized value it proposes.
During playback via Roon you find a setting called Headroom Management in the MUSE DSP of Roon. With it you can specify a fixed fader applied to everything you play back via Roon.
Best DrCWO
You can use DSP volume if your endpoint supports it these tend to be limited to is a pc or roon bridge device to a DAC if not then as suggested apply a fixed headroom but this cannot be adjusted on the fly like DSP volume.
Thank you for the answer.
DSP volume is brilliant. Most of my endpoints support it, but my Schiit Loki DSD does not. Thankfully DSD is lower in gain anyway, so it isn’t so bad. But I love being able to use my Apple Watch or phone to quickly adjust volume from anywhere when DSP volume is enabled.
Interesting thread, I’ll be a contrary Mary and say that I’ve never liked any DSP in roon. Any time I activate any form of DSP, or volume control in the software realm I have always felt it screws up the sound somehow.
I find it hard to quantify how, as from a tonal perspective everything clearly remains unchanged, but whenever I use DSP I find myself getting bored of the system very quickly. My foot stops tapping along and I find the whole thing loses “life”.
I suspect this means something is happening in the time domain with reconstruction filters possible. But whatever it is, I don’t like it, so roon runs clean for me.
I run voume levelling on all my endpoints, personally I think it’s great.
From a measurement point of view there is no impact at all despite you reduce volume by more than 24dB.
Best DrCWO
The thing is,I don’t like any kind of preamp, or attenuator.
But digital volume control was not good if you do it from 16 bits, then if you upsample it and volume down the right way, it becomes the best way to control the volume. The noise floor would be much lower compare to other ways of doing it. Which means a darker background.
One thing you have to notice, better sound quality doesn’t mean a more present sound. That’s two different things.
As best I can tell, not a single measurement there deals with time domain and filter reconstruction at the dac output. Feels like an incomplete test.
