Hi @GuyADye 

Please check this thread for some answers:

M

I used Foobar to apply ReplayGain tags to all of my FLAC files years ago...so apparently and for whatever reason, SONOS ignores them while all other players that support ReplayGain honor them without fail.

Last night, I found something called Roon which fully supports SONOS Streaming and has (so far) performed flawless Volume Leveling across our little SONOS universe. So, problem solved.

Thanks for the response.

Hi @GuyADye 

I just looked up Roon as I had never heard of it - it looks pretty good. Thanks.

Another way around the issue may be to remove the ITUNNORM tag from your files.

Either way, glad to hear you’re not scaring the family any more!

We use Sonos in our retail outlet.  It’s generally fantastic.

BUT sudden surges or drops in volume are very inappropriate in a retail setting - we want a constant level of (gentle) background music to build a calm retail atmosphere.

Big booms are the most disruptive, but major drops in volume are also unwelcome.  If it goes too quiet, it is really noticeable and adds a kind of tension to our space where previously there was a nice feeling of calm.

We would absolutely love to see Volume Normalization added to Sonos.  You could add a “normalization speed” setting - i.e. how responsive is the normalization.  Clearly it should be fast if there is a sudden big boom -- but if it goes quiet you don’t want to amplify it too much unless it stays quiet for a long while.

Or best of all, the system could “listen ahead” to a stream and determine the optimal level of normalization so there is never any sudden change in sound pressure.

Many Sonos products even have a microphone built in (for Alexa).  Surely added some kind of sound-level monitoring is not a massive engineering problem, but I see that this issue has been open for several years.

Would be great to see this solved.

You’re talking about using an audio compressor.

This thread is all about normalisation, where the track carries a tag identifying how to preset the volume so as to achieve the same average loudness as other tracks. The dynamic range is unaffected.

Sonos has never introduced a compressor, and in my opinion never will. It’s simply not aimed at commercial settings such as yours. You could try using an external compressor, feeding audio into your Sonos system via a Line-In connection.

In a retail setting, I would think there would be streaming services available that not only have the appropriate license for commercial use, but handle any normalization or compressing that would be needed.  I’m guessing though.

Thanks for comments.

1. Yes, well aware of compressors (I have a recording studio and have been recording & sound-engineering since the 1980s).  This would be a solution but it is self-defeating: the whole point of getting Sonos was to go wireless and to get rid of cables, wiring and sprawl.  We want a one-box solution.
2. re. Licences - we pay for all the relevant public performance licences in the UK so this is all in order.

I brought it up not to question whether you had the right license for public performance, but that perhaps the answer is with a streaming service that caters to your needs better.

In such a use case a well curated playlist that addresses this issue in its making is the answer. Up front investment of time, but it will get the job done.

There are many business-specific music services listed at https://www.sonos.com/en-us/business - hopefully they offer normalization.

Can anyone from the Sonos team please come forward and shed some light on this issue? I am considering returning my speakers if this is not getting implemented.

This war 3 years ago! I spoke to live chat today and got the exact same reply. It doesn’t seem like there is any interest from the Sonos team in implementing this feature. All we get is the same generic semi automated reply.

Is there any other similar to Sonos in features make that offers this? It would be a big selling point if it did…

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.

 When can we  normalize the volume between songs?
This is a must to have for a system that’s build for streaming music.
 

There are actually two issues: “Normalization” and “Compression”.

Consider two tracks: Track 1 has levels that range from 2 through 8 and Track 2 has levels 3 through 10.

Normalizing can set the max levels to be equal. The result after normalization could be: Track 1: 3-9 and Track 2: 2 -9. However, the range of Track 2 is still wider than Track 1 and it is possible that the lower levels of Track 2 will disappear into the room noise. It is also possible that one note in Track 2 will be at 9 and overall Track 2 will still seem quieter than Track 1.

Compression attempts to limit the range. Track 1 could be compressed to: 5-8 and Track 2 compressed to 7-10.

Compression alone would still result in a level difference, but Track 2 could be normalized to 7-10.

Due to normalization with compression both tracks would likely sound similar.

Rock and Roll fans should consider what compression and normalization would do to the Speak to Me track on Dark Side of the Moon. Part of the fun in this album is its dynamics. It’s not quite the same album when compressed and normalized vs its original dynamics.

I think that this outcome is what most users asking for the feature would be fine with. It would retain dynamic differences - desirable - within a track, without having to reach for the volume control every few songs when overall one sounds louder or quieter to the extent that it intrudes on the listening experience.

The problem is that no one seems to be doing this well.

Hard to understand how any company can be so unresponsive to its customers on such a nagging issue.  If you don’t want to do it or cant do it, say so and give a reason...hopefully the real one.

Answers like:”We’ll send the request to the responsible department” don’t meet even the minimum customer care response.

Not surprised.

I have been a sonos customer for five years or so.  The techs are fine when there is a question or problem but I have seen no evidence at all that this company gives a tinkers damn what their customers think.  They seem to consider themselves experts in this technology and that is what they will market.  If you don’t like that, then there are other options.

Some people are OK with that, but to just refuse to engage with your customers cancels out a lot of the product advantages, and that’s a fact.

As your profile shows compatible Sonos products, you could perhaps use Airplay and one of the MSP’s native Apps that supports track normalisation, such as the Amazon Music App (…or Sound Check in the Apple Music App Settings) and see if that works for you ?
 

https://productionadvice.co.uk/amazon-music-loudness-normalization/

Will add my confusion to this one. The Spotify app has built in normalisation which works great when I connect to my Move via Bluetooth, however it is disabled on the Spotify app when casting to sonos via WiFi. The difference can be very jarring. 

How many requests do we need for Sonos to give priority to this?

There are, what, five million Sonos users. 1% of that would be 50k users. I don’t see 50k requests on this forum, or even 50.

Not really an answer to my question but thanks for your insight. Let’s assume your numbers are accurate, are there features that reach anywhere close to 50k requests?

I too think this miss is of a feature that would be a far more important contributor to the quality of the listening experience, than that achieved by all the pandering to the Hi Res nonsense that Sonos also has now started doing.

I don’t expect, like most companies, it is a ‘voting’ decision. I would assume that Product Managers weigh many various factors, but likely the most important one would be how a feature impacts sales. Or what management wants, which is likely much the same thing. Not so much ‘how do we make people who already purchased happy’, but more ‘what will increase sales’. Fortunately, for those of us who are already customers, there is a lot of crossover there, but it isn’t 100%, I would think. 

It seems Sonos' intentions to co-operate with Spotify are limited (and vice-versa). Which won't be beneficial for either party.

As this has been a problem for several years now and the hardware gets old and needs to be replaced every now and then, it's something to consider in the next buying decision.