Spotify Volume Leveling / Normalization


Userlevel 2

Since I only found posts about this topic from a year ago or older, I wanted to check if there has been any progress for volume normalization when using a third party app (in my case Spotify).

The setting for it in the Spotify app is only applied on the device youre changing it on. Because those settings are not accessible in the Sonos app, there is no way to set it for my brand new Sonos setup (neither through Spotify nor Sonos).

The result is that the volume of the music varies frequently; often just slightly, but regularly its very noticeable. It happens often enough to degrade the user experience considerably.


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39 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +17

Hi @burakalaka.

Welcome to the Sonos community and thanks for reaching out to us.

I would be morethan happy to send this to our engineering team to take a look into. Just to set your expectation since you will not be contacted directly by our engineering team for updates on your feature request,Please refer to this topic as another member of the community have requested this feature. Our engineering team and Sonos management has not yet provided any details on the release or progress of this feature. I would suggest subscribing to this thread and our announcement topic to be up-to-date when it comes to new feature release and product updates.

Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have further questions, additional feature request or concerns. We are always happy to help out.

Thanks,

Userlevel 2

Thank you for your reply, I’ll check it out.

 

The setting for it in the Spotify app is only applied on the device youre changing it on. Because those settings are not accessible in the Sonos app, there is no way to set it for my brand new Sonos setup (neither through Spotify nor Sonos).

 

I have found that volume level change issues become intrusive usually when multiple source playlists are in use, and when I use just Spotify, this is less of an issue. I used the Spotify Connect feature to allow the use of the Spotify app to start music play, and then to transfer the stream to Sonos via the Spotify app. Are you suggesting that in this case the selected in Spotify app normalization toggle is not operational?

Userlevel 2

Hey @Kumar 

It appears to be confirmed by Sonos that no volume normalization is performed, even when played through Spotify connect. 

Never had this problem with legacy products. Listening experience was supposed to be much better with the expensive upgrades I just made. Just saying!!!

Userlevel 1

Just bought a beam and loving it but it really sucks listening to Spotify because of this. Seems like this should have been done a long time ago? 

Trying to listen to music is pretty disappointing having to adjust the volume on every song.

Userlevel 1

This really needs to be addressed. As a brand new Sonos user, I am shocked that it hasn’t.  Spotify is one of the biggest streaming services out there and it seems like a miss. It’s enough to make me think about returning my Sonos gear. 

Userlevel 1

Same here. This needs to be fixed. I’ve bought 4 speakers and its so annoying adjusting the volume every song

Userlevel 1

And same from me. I have unpackaged a new Sonos One Gen. 2 today and immediately noticed this problem. There are forum posts 4+ years old about this, I can’t believe this hasn’t been addressed. I will be returning this speaker. 

Userlevel 1

Hi @burakalaka.

Welcome to the Sonos community and thanks for reaching out to us.

I would be morethan happy to send this to our engineering team to take a look into. Just to set your expectation since you will not be contacted directly by our engineering team for updates on your feature request,Please refer to this topic as another member of the community have requested this feature. Our engineering team and Sonos management has not yet provided any details on the release or progress of this feature. I would suggest subscribing to this thread and our announcement topic to be up-to-date when it comes to new feature release and product updates.

Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have further questions, additional feature request or concerns. We are always happy to help out.

Thanks,

Hey Paul. Any news on this topic?

I’ve just bought a new full Sonos set up and disappointed to find this issue, especially since shelling out a lot of cash for these speakers. There seems to be posts about this from 7 years back with no signs of any development on it!

I can’t imagine this issue would be that hard to fix. Come on Sonos!

Can anyone from Sonos reply to this?

The lack of volume leveling or normalization with Spotify is really inexcusable. 

I just upgraded all of my legacy Sonos products and realize once again that this wasn’t addressed despite spending more than $1200.00.  

 

Help us, the community of early adopters and enthusiasts, support Sonos and not go the route of smart speakers with audio synchronization such as Google’s devices.  Sonos just has to work in order to justify the additional costs.   

Userlevel 1

Count me in. Playlists are sometimes not listenable due to the huge differences in volume between songs.

I don’t think this would be too difficult to implement in the Sonos firmware, from an engineering point of view (as long as the Spotify API is able to deliver the gain per song, that is).

It’s definitely possible - not sure if this is a new feature from spotify but average volume is available for any track, see https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/#object-audiofeaturesobject

Would be lovely to get an update on this.

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

I simply don't understand why this most fundamental of features is not part of Sonos. Any playlist takes songs from different albums, all of which have different volume levels. It's not even like it's a rare thing to experience. It's such a major part of the UX, and it takes the edge off the listening experience for me. 

 

Surely being able to set a consistent volume that raises and lowers levels by track isn't that complicated, when you consider what else Sonos can do? 

Just spent an awful lot of money kitting out an entire bar with Sonos speakers, never even dreaming that this would even be a issue in 2021.

 

But apparently it is. A big issue. And one that makes the sound system in our bar almost unusable. 

 

And apparently Sonos can’t even be bothered to respond to this thread let alone sort the issue?

 

Sort yourselves out, Sonos, or the whole lot is going on the dump...

Ugh, another large corporation that completely ignores obvious user demand for a feature that would be of tremendous value to users and cost the company fuck all to implement. :rolling_eyes:

Ugh, another large corporation that completely ignores obvious user demand for a feature that would be of tremendous value to users and cost the company fuck all to implement. :rolling_eyes:

I agree that doing this would be far more useful than faffing around with the red herring of Hi Res audio, but I don't think any other make offers this either; it is not that easy to implement for music from streaming services, I suspect. 

Spotify offers this for music played on the phone, and it is then available on Sonos if the phone audio is sent to Sonos via bluetooth; but that is a clunky way when Spotify connect can move the music stream to Sonos - but via that mode, normalisation is lost.

Ugh, another large corporation that completely ignores obvious user demand for a feature that would be of tremendous value to users and cost the company fuck all to implement. :rolling_eyes:

I agree that doing this would be far more useful than faffing around with the red herring of Hi Res audio, but I don't think any other make offers this either; it is not that easy to implement for music from streaming services, I suspect. 

Spotify offers this for music played on the phone, and it is then available on Sonos if the phone audio is sent to Sonos via bluetooth; but that is a clunky way when Spotify connect can move the music stream to Sonos - but via that mode, normalisation is lost.

 

Pretty weaksauce excuse, tbh. They’ve had people asking for this feature for at least 3 years, going by the posts in this forum. If they were interested in doing it, that’s plenty of time. Hell, they’ve developed a whole new app ecosystem in that time (S2), which has been criticised for removing features that the userbase actually liked in the original app!

 

Spotify offers average track volume information for every music file, that’s how the spotify app can normalise volumes. It can’t be that hard to build that functionality into the sonos app. Sonos are an audio company whose whole value proposition revolves around app control of their ‘smart’ speakers, which apparently aren’t smart enough to support volume normalisation.

 

If Spotify on my phone or desktop pc can put its normalisation onto all my other dumb speakers but not Sonos’ smart speakers, and Sonos have been getting the request for MULTIPLE YEARS that’s not because it’s hard for Sonos to do it, it’s because they don’t CARE to do it.

Spotify offers average track volume information for every music file, that’s how the spotify app can normalise volumes.

Please confirm that the normalisation data is made available to Sonos via the cloud interface to Spotify.

 

It can’t be that hard to build that functionality into the sonos app.

The Sonos app doesn’t touch the stream. It’s a remote control. The functionality that's so ‘easy to build’ would have to go into all of the players.

Spotify offers average track volume information for every music file, that’s how the spotify app can normalise volumes.

Please confirm that the normalisation data is made available to Sonos via the cloud interface to Spotify.

 

It can’t be that hard to build that functionality into the sonos app.

The Sonos app doesn’t touch the stream. It’s a remote control. The functionality that's so ‘easy to build’ would have to go into all of the players.

Wait wait, on the one hand you want to make the claim that the spotify app is just a remote control, and doesn’t touch the stream, but on the other hand you also want to make the claim that the availability of the normalisation data matters to sonos? Have your cake and eat it too, much? So which is it?

Spotify offers average track volume information for every music file, that’s how the spotify app can normalise volumes.

Please confirm that the normalisation data is made available to Sonos via the cloud interface to Spotify.

 

It can’t be that hard to build that functionality into the sonos app.

The Sonos app doesn’t touch the stream. It’s a remote control. The functionality that's so ‘easy to build’ would have to go into all of the players.

Wait wait, on the one hand you want to make the claim that the spotify app is just a remote control, and doesn’t touch the stream, but on the other hand you also want to make the claim that the availability of the normalisation data matters to sonos? Have your cake and eat it too, much? So which is it?

Read again before diving into the cake. I said the Sonos app is just a remote control.

The stream interface is between the Sonos player and the service’s servers. That’s where normalisation metadata would have to be available.

Spotify Connect also does not deliver normalisation when used with an Echo device; the only way to get that is to connect the phone via bluetooth to the Echo . Again, a clunky way. 

I suspect that the same would apply to Google smart speakers.

@BadgerMan : When you say that Spotify can put normalisation into your dumb speakers, presumably this is via a bluetooth connection to them, or via a wire to their line in jacks. The latter would also work with Sonos kit that has line in jacks.