Volume normalization


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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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This has recently become a serious issue for me, so much so that I am considering getting rid of my Sonos system.

Suddenly, over the last few weeks, the volume levels across songs on Apple Music when played via Sonos are all over the place. This began happening soon after the mysterious “this song is encoded incorrectly” error messages began (these have now mostly stopped). Something, somewhere, must have changed.

As a customer, it doesn’t matter to me if Sonos is at fault or Apple Music is at fault – at the end of the day, I just want it to be usable.

Sonos needs to figure this out, because it works fine when I play Apple Music via a BT speaker, or my headphones.

I have been having this same issue since 15.2 or whenever they introduced the Eras.

 

I pinpointed that songs encoded as MPEG in my AM library are the culprits. So I’m either replacing them with the Apple Music variant or importing them into Garage Band (lowering the dB if needed) and bouncing them out as AAC. Converting them within the Music app didn’t fix the volume issue. 


I was using AirPlay (which sucks itself) and playing music from my iOS devices with Sound Check enabled as a “work around” but literally had ZERO issues with volume inconsistencies prior to 15.2 almost a year ago playing through the Sonos app! 

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This has recently become a serious issue for me, so much so that I am considering getting rid of my Sonos system.

Suddenly, over the last few weeks, the volume levels across songs on Apple Music when played via Sonos are all over the place. This began happening soon after the mysterious “this song is encoded incorrectly” error messages began (these have now mostly stopped). Something, somewhere, must have changed.

As a customer, it doesn’t matter to me if Sonos is at fault or Apple Music is at fault – at the end of the day, I just want it to be usable.

Sonos needs to figure this out, because it works fine when I play Apple Music via a BT speaker, or my headphones.

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.  

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.

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

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.

Userlevel 7
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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.

Userlevel 3
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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. 

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.

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.

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

 

 

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

 

 

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.

 

 

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?

 

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. 

 

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

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🤔?

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. 

 

I’m surprised there are not more people complaining about this topic. I have been annoyed with this so much. I cannot mixed playlists as one songs are on different levels of loudness. I often have to change the volume manually multiple times. I would expect such as premium product to have solved this issue. For me this is something to look for alternatives. Especially if one looks how long this topic has been discussed here. Sonos product management must be sleeping. 

 

It’s a long thread, but take a moment to read through the first page to get an idea of some of the possible complications/reasons with volume normalization through Sonos.  And honestly, 129 replies over 4 years is really not a ton of complaints, particularly considering that many are duplicate posters and some people aren’t really complaining about it, just commenting.

I’m not at all against the feature, whatever way it would need to happen, but I just don’t see how it’s it’s terribly surprised given a little background history.  Also think it’s understandable to want to look elsewhere if the feature is that important to you, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the feature is hard to fine in other multiroom audio systems.

Have you look at using airplay or casting directly from streaming apps?

I’m surprised there are not more people complaining about this topic. I have been annoyed with this so much. I cannot mixed playlists as one songs are on different levels of loudness. I often have to change the volume manually multiple times. I would expect such as premium product to have solved this issue. For me this is something to look for alternatives. Especially if one looks how long this topic has been discussed here. Sonos product management must be sleeping. 

I now use Sonos as dumb kit having largely moved my interface to Echo front end devices that are wired to Sonos line in jacks. But even Echo does not offer this feature which is disappointing, and I suspect that there isn't anyone else that does. If you come across any that do, post the details here!

I have found that it is better to listen to albums as opposed to shuffled playlists just to do away with the large swings in sound levels that seem to be inevitable when using the latter.

That’s exactly what I will try to find out. Plus honestly, there is not much to lose in that aspect - even in case a replacement option is not doing it well, it will hardly carry out volume normalization worse.

it's something to consider in the next buying decision.

But is there any option that does this well?

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.

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. 

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.

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?

Userlevel 7
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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.

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

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. 

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/

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