Tidal and intermittent working volume levelling

Hi I am experiencing some strange behaviour when streaming from Tidal.
While playing a song with the volume leveling turned on, sometimes the audio gets loud, like there is no audio leveling.
I checked and the volume I hear is indeed the same as without leveling. The issue is not specific to a track or an album, but the latest track with issues was the last song and title track of the album The Sea of Corinne Bailey Rae.

With the Tidal tracks being as loud as they are (average leveling is around -10dB), it is a bit of a scare when the volume comes up with that much.

Setup:
Roon server version 1.1 Build 102. 64bit on a dedicated windows 10 “server”
PiCorePlayer version 2.01 on a RPI 2 connected via USB to a SMSL M8 DAC. DSD64 (dop) nicely working.
Tidal HiFi account for the Netherlands

Somebody have the same experience?

Regards,
Jelle

Hey @jelle_kasteel – up until very recently, volume leveling didn’t work on TIDAL content at all, as there’s no way for Roon to analyze the stream.

We recently discovered that TIDAL does provide us volume leveling information via their API, and as of our most recent release, we are taking this information into consideration when volume leveling is on. That said, we don’t have any control over the information itself, and there’s not a lot we can do if the information isn’t accurate or is missing.

I can, however, take a look if you want to give me a few examples of tracks that don’t seem to be leveling properly – links to the tracks on the TIDAL website would be great. You should also confirm you’re running Build 102, as that’s the first Roon release to include this functionality.

Thanks for the report!

Thank you for the quick response!

I forgot to mention that it happens while playing a track. So the volume jumps up and then after a while it goes down to the proper adjusted volume again. Sometimes it happens several times in one song.

I will provide you with some examples as soon a have a few.

A question on this matter. Does the API give the volume normalisation info once or does it provide it with every call to fill the buffer? If it is the latter, it would explain the on and off in onde track.

Regards,
Jelle