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Contributor I
April 22, 2018

Volume normalization

  • April 22, 2018
  • 142 replies
  • 21397 views
Sonos needs volume normalization. Even services that have it such as Spotify pandora and Apple Music are not normalized when playing on Sonos.
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142 replies

January 19, 2020

it does change the audio quality but this isn’t much of a concern for casual BG listening. 

That would depend on how it is implemented? My expectation of this would be that it delivers the same result as moving the volume slider does, a shifting of all the sound levels in the track to the left or to the right, so that all tracks in the playlist are played equally loudly.

Edward R
Retired Sonos Staff
January 20, 2020

@Anonymous User. Unfortunately, they do not share their feature development schedule, plans or intentions. As such, we cannot say when (or even if) requested features will be put into development. It’s as much a surprise for us as it is for our users when a feature gets introduced.

Naturally, we do find out slightly ahead of time to be able to announce the introduction of a feature. If such time comes, we will be sure to let you know.

Try searching our articles for help with your question: https://www.sonos.com/en/support
January 20, 2020

Normalisation has been operative for local library tracks -- after a rather incomplete fashion -- since the very earliest players. Memory isn't a factor. What's missing for tracks streamed from online services is the requisite gain factor to make the volume adjustment. Either it isn't in the stream metadata or Sonos has no agreed way to extract it.

@Edward R : can you confirm the first sentence in the above quoted? And if so, further, what exactly is done for local library tracks by Sonos in this direction, and what is not being done?

January 20, 2020

And for anyone interested, a link to a topic on the same issue that I started two years ago, that got no replies, less than two hundred views, and was closed down!

https://en.community.sonos.com/wireless-speakers-228992/volume-normalisation-across-albums-sources-for-consistently-high-quality-sound-6764671

Lyricist II
February 7, 2020

PLEASE FIX THIS ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RIDICULOUS

UNACCEPTABLE 

BASIC USER OPTION FUNCTIONALITY

COME ON SONOS - RESPOND

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lyricist I
March 6, 2020

Hi @Edward R: Even though all the other comments already summarize my disappointment about missing volume normalization, I’m adding another comment to emphasize the importance of this feature. 

Sonos is positioning itself as a “premium” version of an Alexa speaker, but without having a working volume normalization when listening to Spotify, it feels very dated and is certainly not something I would ever recommend to a friend. I can understand that implementing volume normalization may not be trivial, but it is handled on almost any other solution and is a de-facto standard for playing music through Spotify. For a $200 option Sonos speaker, it’s embarrassing that this feature has not been implemented after hundreds of requests from paying customers and reason enough to make a change to a different brand.

Lyricist III
March 7, 2020

If you create a playlist that contains a wide variety of music, RMS peak normalisation would really be a neat feature. Today’s music is leveled out to maximum amplitude, whereas songs from the 60/70/80s had so much more peak varation.

 

Please, Sonos, fix this! 

Lyricist I
March 26, 2020

I second all of the said above.
Couldn’t believe it that it isn’t a thing yet on Sonos Devices...

Lyricist I
April 1, 2020

I’ll add my 2 cents as well.  I listen to talk-radio a lot thru Sonos - when the program switches from news, talk, weather, phone in listeners I am constantly chasing the volume.  I’m not only surprised, but disappointed, that Sonos with all it’s hi-tech knowledge built in to it’s system has not, or will not, address this issue.  Please put your technological acumen to work on this - very distracting.

106rallye
April 1, 2020

 @ronalds872  I can understand the question for nomalisation for services like Spotify or your own collections. Both collections must have been brought together for a lot of different sources - hence possible differences in volume.

The differences in volume you experience are based on a choice by the people making the radio program. Your remark should be adressed to them, not Sonos.