Tidal louder than volume levelled Local tracks

Support
1

No, this is not the problem (it is a problem indeed :slight_smile:, but not the problem I have with volume leveling).
If I have the same (new 2016 first release) album local and in Tidal and queue one track from Tidal and then the same track from local content. The Tidal track is significant louder than the local track.

Local track

  • mp3 320 kbps,
  • VL at playback =-7,10db
  • VL in trackinfo =-5,10db
  • file is set to 89db with MP3Gain

Tidal track

  • AAC
  • VL at playback =-11,12db

It’s not really measureable for me, but my guess is, Tidal track is 3-5db louder than the local track.
And that kills the pleasure of listening to a mixed playlist.
Overall, only listening to not mixed content the volume leveling is sufficient for me.

Add: checked different local tracks
All my mp3 tracks are set to 89db with MP3Gain, but Roon Track Info shows me VL values from +4db to -7db.
Shouldn’t they have all the same value, cause MP3Gain has normalized all loudness differences?
Something seems wrong in Roon.

2

Hi @AE67,

I’ve created a new Support thread for your above post to see if we can get the issue resolved. I won’t be able to attempt to reproduce it for about 12 hours, but others might. If it reproduces on other systems then we’ll put in a Bug report.

Would you mind setting out system details ? If the devs have the same gear then we might be able to check if it is gear related or not.

3

don’t think it’s a Roon issue: Tidal plays louder than anything else also on my Sonos system and in A+

4

Thank you

audio setup is total simple:
Roon plays audio over airplay to a Yamaha RN-602 Stereo Receiver connect with Ethernet

Other system information:
Roon: Version 1.2 (build 142) stable (64bit)
OS: Windows 10 Pro

PC:
Manufacturer: ARLT
Board: Asus P8P67 Rev 3.1
CPU: Intel i5-2500K
RAM 8 GB
GPU: Nvidia GForce GTX 560 Ti
Audio: Onboard (not in use with Roon)

5

I think a good starting point could be:

All my mp3 tracks are set to 89db with MP3Gain, but Roon Track Info shows me VL values from +4db to -7db.
Shouldn’t they have all the same value, cause MP3Gain has normalized all loudness differences?

6

Roon cannot do audio analysis on the Tidal tracks in the same way as it does with local tracks. That is why there is no display in the bottom area of the screen. This will also mean it does not do any levelling in a mixed queue.

Not sure why Tidal tracks are hotter than we expect though. Probably deliberate.

8

Please read my first post again and you will see that also in mixed queue volume leveling for tidal tracks is done. You can see in the signal path the value of the volume leveling for each tidal track.

10

If you don’t see a way how to fix this behaviour, a simple setting could be a workaround.
In LMS they have a setting “Adjustment for internet streams” for the volume leveling, there you can set an additional db offset for volume leveling of tidal tracks.