Volume normalization

That you mention that there are only 129 replies in 4 year's is unbelievable for me.

I have this installation for a year and from the first week I mentioned this problem. Never a response from sonos. At that time I searched the internet for a solution. At that moment it was clear that a lot of users had the same problem and that this problem was already known for several years but that there was still no solution from Sonos.

From this last response that only 129 people have this problem means that Sonos is not recognizes the problem. So I regret that I spent more than 2000€ to a system that has no stable volume. 

Is it a Sonos issue, or should it be the source-material/sending-devices that need to resolve these volume-level issues?.. I see my products as speakers that play what they’re asked to play - I don’t want them tampering with the source material. It seems to me to be a case for the sound engineers and OEM’s to sort this - there should be some kind of acceptable standards perhaps, but that said, I’m not one for limiting things, particularly if it affects creativity. I’m not convinced it’s a job that Sonos need to resolve, or indeed if the required volume-levelling data is even held in the various files being played in some cases🤔?

In this thread, there were 129 replies in 4 years.  It’s reality, why is it unbelievable to mention things that are true?

Sonos replied twice on the first page.  I didn’t look further.  Sonos doesn’t usually reply back to each person in a thread, particularly to say the same thing they’ve already said.  And yes, there are many more places for people to request a feature on the internet than this forum, but it seems fair to judge how big an issue is compared to other issues complained about on this forum.  That doesn’t mean the issue shouldn’t be important to you.

What streaming service do you use, and have you asked them to offer volume normalization through their Sonos streams?

I don’t work for Sonos, so my statements shouldn’t be interpreted to be what Sonos thinks about the topic.

I use Youtube music for streaming. 

My previous installation had this feature so I never had this problem before. 

If you know about a setting in the Youtube music app for volume normalization , let us know.

I don’t think that true Volume Normalization that will satisfy everyone is practical. There is a lot of popular music that has a very limited dynamic range and this could easily be normalized, but this would require industry wide standards that don’t exist. True normalization would require analyzing every existing track in advance and assigning a parameter that players could use to normalize playback.

However, normalization is not the whole issue. Room background noise and music dynamics require a different approach. For wide dynamic range (very quiet to very loud) material, the quieter passages will be lost in room noise while the louder passages could be painful. “Compression” can deal with this and this could be included in the playback system independently of any normalization. Unfortunately, industry and consumers don’t seem to understand the benefits of compression. In past decades adding compression would increase the cost somewhat. Now days almost everything is processed in the digital domain and compression would be a zero additional hardware cost option.

Regardless of the huge (in my opinion) benefits of adding compression to the playback systems, “high end” and “’reviewer” types dump on compression as being very bad. This is a shame because the end user is not required to enable compression and the amount of compression can be adjusted for current conditions. The music industry is very aware of the value of compression. Modern popular tracks are highly compressed prior to release because it can easily be shown the this increases sales. Listeners using phones in noisy environments are more likely to “like” compressed tracks. Unfortunately, listeners in quiet, home environments don’t always think that these tracks sound so good. Including a variable compression option in players could resolve this dilemma.

iTunes was doing this 20 years ago. Unbelievable with all the tech to tune my speakers and stream services that Sonos can’t crack a simple volume normalization on a playlist. Pathetic. 

In the decade+ of using Sonos, I have never once thought I needed my music normalized. You can’t please all the people all the time, I guess.

So, I don’t think actual normalization is needed so much as a gain setting for each input.  Is this an option that I’m missing?  It’d be simple to implement.  Plex plays MUCH quieter than Spotify.  If I could adjust the gain of either, it would at least solve that problem.

That just means your music listening habits are different from the people who would love to have this feature. Lucky you. :)

we have the same problem.  we have the sonos connected to amps for music in the gardens  and the beach. it is crazy that the volumen goes way up from one song to other. an there is no way to fix it.