Enthusiast II

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Volume levels too high after 15.2 update

170 replies
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Good evening,

My system updated to 15.2 today and following this update, all of my speakers’ volumes are easily double what they were before.

I run one of my Play 1’s at volume 4 at night and have done for years, but volume 4 is now way too loud and even setting it to 1 is very loud.

I have 2x Play 1’s, 1x Play 3 and the latest Five and it’s the same on all of them.

I’ve had to set a volume limit of 50% on each speaker but now all of my volume references for me and my family are all over the place which is incredibly annoying.

Any ideas?

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Corry PAnswer

Sonos Staff

Hi @Tom_69 et al

Thank you @Tom_69 for bringing it to our attention that we did not yet update this thread - this was an error on our part, and apologies for the lateness.

With the advent of spatial audio from Apple Music becoming available to play on Sonos devices, Apple expressed an interest in actioning a change due to the volumes of stereo tracks being inconsistent with each other and with tracks from other music providers. In line with this, and with long-standing requests from our customers to apply volume normalisation to tracks, we have added to our speakers a response to the normalisation figures provided.

The current behaviour of the sound volume is intentional and by design. Due to the way we now utilise volume normalisation metadata from Apple Music in update 15.2, average loudness is now better aligned between different tracks. Some stereo tracks may appear louder than before and some stereo tracks may appear quieter as a result, but as I said this is expected behaviour.

Knowledge of these changes were not widely distributed internally, hence the reason why we raised this as a possible "bug" on the basis of everyone's experience on this thread. We aim to improve this in the future to minimise the chance of this sort of misunderstanding happening again.

I understand this is not ideal for everyone, and as such I have internally raised as a feature request the option to disable this normalisation process at will from within the Sonos app.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

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Ken_Griffiths

I’m not sure if this is related, but the symptoms are similar. I’m using QNAP and streaming my own music and using the Sonos folders options with MOVE. About one week ago, I started having the issues outlined above on Sonos MOVE, but for my own music library and not a service. Is this related and is there a fix?

It’s probably not related - what is the issue exactly?

M

musicbear

Trending Lyricist I

In the last few days, my Move plays some songs that I’m streaming from my QNAP at low levels and others at high levels, even though the set volume is the same. I’ve not changed the settings or the music being streamed.

Ken_Griffiths

In the last few days, my Move plays some songs that I’m streaming from my QNAP at low levels and others at high levels, even though the set volume is the same. I’ve not changed the settings or the music being streamed.

Ah that’s a different issue. Sonos do not apply any volume normalisation to files from any music source and perhaps rightly so in some peoples view.

However, Sonos apparently can and do alter the playback levels using the ITUNNORM or REPLAYGAIN_TRACKGAIN tags in the embedded metadata for a track.

When it comes to general streaming music services though - and this includes things like Plex - it really depends on whether those mentioned tags are passed by the service to Sonos players, or not.

I understand that you can point Sonos to a local Music Library on a NAS or PC etc. and if the tags are present, or you insert them yourself with a Tag editor, like MP3Tag for example, then Sonos will apply the normalisation.

I hope that helps.

M

musicbear

Trending Lyricist I

This would have to be done track by track? I’ve not had this issue until recently. Any ideas why there may have been a change? I’ve not changed my music library recently beyond moving some files to a different folder.

Ken_Griffiths

This would have to be done track by track? I’ve not had this issue until recently. Any ideas why there may have been a change? I’ve not changed my music library recently beyond moving some files to a different folder.

With software such as MP3Tag the library tracks can be batch-updated to any/every track selected in its interface - so it’s not necessary to do it track by track - personally I don’t use any normalisation and just play the tracks as intended, but I appreciate that others prefer to use this feature.

A

Anonymous

This may help some people…..

Apples music is loud in my Sonos system.

Set the max volume to about 35% is Sonos app settings.

Start playing Apple Music via the Sonos app to an Airplay compatible speaker, 5 gen 2, One SL etc, and the volume stays pretty consistent.

Add a speaker that isn’t Airplay compatible, Play1 Play 3, Sound bar, and there's suddenly a huge volume increase…

M

musicbear

Trending Lyricist I

I think my issues were related to an update that was needed that I was not aware of. Once updated, everything is back to normal!

Ken_Griffiths

This may help some people…..

Apples music is loud in my Sonos system.

Set the max volume to about 35% is Sonos app settings.

Start playing Apple Music via the Sonos app to an Airplay compatible speaker, 5 gen 2, One SL etc, and the volume stays pretty consistent.

Add a speaker that isn’t Airplay compatible, Play1 Play 3, Sound bar, and there's suddenly a huge volume increase…

Sadly I can’t test this myself, as I don’t have a non-AirPlay device in the setup here, but is the Play:1/3 soeaker you’re adding to the mix set at the 35% volume level in the App too (or less), before you group them? - I did check the steps with all Airplay compatible speakers and everything works fine with those. That’s setting their volume levels in the Sonos App in conjunction with the Airplay sending device too (an iPad in my case).

A

Anonymous

Hi Ken,

Each speaker had been setup individually with the same track and max volume set to 35%.

It would appear that when grouping airplay and non airplay speakers together the app (Sonos) adds the 35% max volume of each speaker together and then increases the max volume to 70%.

To test that I grouped the two airplay speakers I have, One SL and Play 5 gen 2s, together and the volume stayed the same.

I can’t imagine this ongoing issue is that obvious, but the phrase “the biggest problems often have the simplest solutions.” does sound rather apt at this time

Ken_Griffiths

Hi Ken,

Each speaker had been setup individually with the same track and max volume set to 35%.

It would appear that when grouping airplay and non airplay speakers together the app (Sonos) adds the 35% max volume of each speaker together and then increases the max volume to 70%.

To test that I grouped the two airplay speakers I have, One SL and Play 5 gen 2s, together and the volume stayed the same.

I can’t imagine this ongoing issue is that obvious, but the phrase “the biggest problems often have the simplest solutions.” does sound rather apt at this time

I’ve not seen the issue reported before here in the community and sadly I can’t test it myself (as mentioned earlier). It maybe best to take up the matter with Sonos Support Staff, that’s if you’ve not done so already. I’m not even sure if they are aware of the issue as this thread is a different issue, I believe. Anyhow here’s the link to contact them:

https://support.sonos.com/s/contact

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