Contributor I

Spotify Volume Leveling / Normalization

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
July 23, 2020
39 replies
12803 views

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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B

BadgerMan

Lyricist III

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.

ratty

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.

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BadgerMan

Lyricist III

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?

ratty

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.

K

Kumar

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.

B

BadgerMan

Lyricist III

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.

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.

So, ratty, what you’re saying is that the Sonos player devs are not sufficiently talented to have the player use an API to get the loudness data from Spotify, as availability pointed out earlier in this very thread. Nice.

K

Kumar

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

So that means that the Spotify app on the phone can do this when it interfaces with the servers. Why then can Sonos not do the same? Technical or commercial reasons for not doing this?

Because for the Spotify app playing on the phone to do normalisation, the metadata has to be there on the servers? So something comes in the way of Sonos units not being able to use that information...

K

Kumar

I have maintained for years that the sound level changes in playlists are far more damaging to the listening experience than any damage caused by lossy codecs. The marginal loss of quality via these codecs is something easily compensated by the human brain. But no amount of brain trickery will overcome sound level changes from one track to the next.

Unfortunately, Sonos has jumped on the bandwagon of the more bits and bytes in Hi Res audio instead of addressing the elephant in the room, especially where multi album playlists played in shuffle mode are concerned.

ratty

All dealt with here:

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.

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.

So, ratty, what you’re saying is that the Sonos player devs are not sufficiently talented to have the player use an API to get the loudness data from Spotify, as availability pointed out earlier in this very thread. Nice.

That’s twice you’ve misrepresented my statements.

ratty

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

So that means that the Spotify app on the phone can do this when it interfaces with the servers. Why then can Sonos not do the same? Technical or commercial reasons for not doing this?

No idea, but see here:

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