I have noticed when using Roon Radio that most every Qobuz track is being Volume leveled to -5.0dB, which indicates to me that Roon is treating the volume info from Qobuz as “unknown” and applying the default leveling. However, if I play a playlist directly from Qobuz (from within Roon) the Qobuz tracks are being “properly” volume leveled (in other words, not to -5.0dB for every track). I don’t know if I’m missing a setting somewhere but the behavior in Roon Radio is quite frustrating, as it leads to very inconsistent volume levels between my own music and the Qobuz tracks. I have read through the previous discussions on this and I thought this was a solved issue…what am I missing? I am not listening to new releases…mostly classic rock stuff while working out which has presumably been round long enough.
What happens when you change this to a different value? Does it then use the different value in Roon Radio? At least this would prove that it’s treating it as “unknown”
Yes it does; I changed the value to -10dB and that’s what it shows for the “unknown” Qobuz tracks. I just started a Tidal trial subscription since they dropped the price and the Roon Radio tracks from Tidal all showed the correct volume leveling. So, it would appear that somehow Roon Radio and Qobuz may not be passing along the correct volume leveling information. A few Qobuz tracks actually did show Volume leveling but the majority (well over 90%) did not. This includes several Beatles tracks which I would assume should have volume levels associated with them by now. Is it possible that all/most of the Qobuz albums in my library have missing volume level info (which presumably Roon pulls from when using Roon Radio)? That could possibly explain why playing a Qobuz playlist gets the correct volume leveling, since it is most likely playing directly from Qobuz rather than the track/album info in my library.
Interesting. I just tested it here and the leveling info was correct for the tracks I tried in Roon Radio. Weird. Though I am on the Early Access branch.
Not the first time something like this has turned up with Roon, Qobuz and volume levelling. Not sure their data is as reliable as Tidals as they don’t use it in their app at all as they have no normalisation like the other services. There has been instances with newer music that’s been added on release day not giving the correct data then later it has. This happens a few weeks ago where I was getting full volume levelling and they were getting some other level completely. Not even the difference between album and track gain would give this much difference either. For radio I would assume Roon would use track gain here and not album to adjust but setting it -5 would indicate its absence odd, but I don’t use radio and rarely use Qobuz these days.
Do you have volume levelling set to auto?
It may well be a bug in radio though.
I do normally have it set to Auto, but tried Track to see if that changed anything…it didn’t. I did get a run of three straight tracks with proper Qobuz volume leveling but alas then it was back to “normal” with no volume leveling. Tidal has worked correctly with every track so far and I’m tempted to switch over once my Qobuz subscription runs out. I use Roon Radio quite a bit so proper volume leveling is essential.
I have a lifetime Roon subscription (purchased several years ago fortunately) so it’s not like I’m going to pack up and leave. It’s just unfortunate that apparently Roon and/or Qobuz consider this a non-issue. However, it’s not something that is easily reproducible due to the somewhat random nature of how Roon Radio selects tracks…as my experience today indicates you can get a streak where it is working properly and then it doesn’t. In my experience, more often than not it doesn’t work.
If anybody is so inclined, try Neil Young’s “Decade” (Qobuz 192kHz 24 bit)…none of the tracks are volume leveled in Roon Radio. This isn’t the only one of course but it does come up often enough in my rotation to be a reliable example.
I hit “Start Radio” on the album and it started with Broken Arrow, apparently properly leveled:
I’m in Germany. My setting is album leveling and -5 dB when unknown. I noticed that it used the same value as my headroom management, -3, so I turned that off and tried again but it made no difference.
Just playing the album in Roon with Qobuz with track gain set gives , choose album it’s setting at 7. So for radio it would work using track gain and so only apply the defaults of -5 if that’s what you have set and it’s absent. But it’s not absent as both Roon and LMS can see it. So maybe an odd bug in Radio. Raise a ticket.
In comparison lms with album and track gain it uses same r128 system as Roon. Both set at -18d lufs. More or less the same.
Thank you; that’s most helpful. I just did the same thing and got the default “unknown” volume leveling of -5dB. Doesn’t matter if set to Auto, Track, or Album.
So how can volume leveling behavior for the identical album be different for different subscribers? Anybody from Roon care to chime in here? Am I missing a setting somewhere that is contributing to this behavior?
I played a few other tracks earlier and they all have different track gain which Roon reads if a single track is played from the album page. If you play all the album it will apply album gain and won’t switch to track unless you manually start a track playing. So the track gain is there for this album. The first track is about 5db ironically but others do change.
I wonder if this info is missing at different CDNs. I could see this causing it if some users experience it and other don’t. But the whole point of a CDN is it hosts all the same data at each site. It’s an odd one I would raise a support ticket and get them to investigate.
Thank you all for your comments. I will open up a ticket and report back if/when I know more.
I opened a ticket with Roon but most likely won’t hear anything over the weekend.
In the meantime, I played around with Roon Radio a bit more and noticed something interesting. I started Roon Radio with a genre for which I have a limited number of Qobuz tracks in my library. I noticed that nearly every Qobuz track it selected was being properly volume leveled and the only ones that weren’t seemed to already be in my library. These tracks were added quite a while (several years) ago…I’m wondering if the volume leveling info for these tracks is somehow missing/obsolete/corrupted. Perhaps any Qobuz track in my library that was added before Qobuz (supposedly) fixed the volume leveling is subject to this behavior.
I tried deleting the Neil Young “Decade” album (which has been in my library for years) and then adding it back, but that didn’t seem to change anything, alas. So I guess that approach won’t fix things.
Hey @Suedkiez,
I hope it’s ok I step in to answer that question: @Stanley_Hall has emailed the Roon accounts team. While I’ll reply there in a sec, just as you suggested, it is best to move this to Support 
. That way, our technical team can start a detailed investigation.
Hi @Stanley_Hall,
There’s a known bug with volume leveling, but the trigger is slightly more nuanced than initiating playback via Play command vs. Roon Radio.
The distinction here is actually between the library object and the non-library object of the same album. When you add/remove an Album from the library, Roon no longer properly applies volume leveling to the non-library version. This is also true, by all indications, when the library remains in the library but you queue the non-library object somehow. Roon Radio is one possible mechanism.
Playing back by manually queuing from the Album page, Roon is calling the library object and volume leveling is properly applied. Roon Radio, when not toggled to restrict to the library, can freely call the non-library object. If I’m reading your report correctly, this is the underlying mechanism for what you’re seeing.
We have a ticket to fix this behavior. I’ll track that work here and notify you all as soon as there’s progress. Thank for your the report!
Thank you for that explanation. So if I’m understanding you correctly, the library object of the album is what you see on the Album page…if you “select” the album so it now appears on its own page with the ratings and tracks/info/versions tabs, you are now viewing the non-library object. Is this correct?
The behavior you’re describing with the library versus non-library objects happens ONLY with Qobuz albums. Both my own albums and Tidal albums have correct volume leveling applied, regardless of how I start the playback (in other words, these albums do NOT seem to be affected by the library versus non-library distinction). This might also explain that when playing through Roon Radio I do get proper volume leveling with certain Qobuz tracks…in these instances the track/album is NOT in my library so Roon is actually going out to Qobuz to “grab” the track for playback.
Guess we should clear up the terminology…by “library” I presume you are talking about Qobuz and/or Tidal; the albums I have ripped myself are under the “Music Folder” when I filter by storage location. Or is all music, regardless of source, considered the library?
All local files are automatically in the library. Streaming albums/tracks are only in the library if you added them to the library, else they are non-library.
Only in-library albums are shown in My Library > Albums.
In an artists discography, both in-library and non-library albums are shown, and the in-library ones have the library icon:
In the Versions tab there is also a distinction:
You can add Roon tags or make metadata edits only to in-library albums/tracks, but you can add library and non-library tracks to playlists.
Thank you for that very thorough explanation…most helpful!