Enthusiast II

Answered

Volume levels too high after 15.2 update

170 replies
12392 views

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

Show previous replies

Ken_Griffiths

Maybe the only solution is to all of us move away from Apple Music to Spotify ? Like all of you I cannot work anymore with volume set to 1 in the whole house (using 12 Sonos products). Another solution might be to sell Sonos products and to buy newer and better equipment from other sound manufacturers. The only sure thing is that staying as is = not the solution. I will evaluate my options and decide what I will remove to solve this key issue.

Just curious, as the Wife and I use Apple Music too (amongst other MSP’s, like Deezer and Amazon Music, aswell as Spotify free version), but do you find this 1% volume-level troubling on all your Sonos products?

We have a Ray, two Era 100s and Sub in our Kitchen/Diner area (as an example) which is about 14’ square in size and the Wife and I would struggle to hear the Apple audio in that room at that low level of 1% even with the surrounds set to ‘Full’ rather than ‘Ambient’.. So I’m just wondering if you find it occurs on just some Sonos products?

In fact there’s not that much of a huge difference between each of the services at 1% volume - nothing that I would be too concerned about at least, to even think to mention it. I guess though that the Wife and I are approx. 6 feet away from each of the speakers (give or take) when we sit around the breakfast bar.

Our Fridge would drown out the sound completely at that 1% volume level, quite easily, I would say.

P

PL13

Lyricist I

Good morning to you,

I do not know about all speakers in the house but I would say they are all equally suffering from the sound boost. I did not notice when it did start but for sure I cannot have Apple Music + Sonos active for work or when going to bed. Hence, I reactivated my Spotify account and added newest playlist through Soundizz. Using Spotify Connect generates the lowest sound but Spotify through Sonos adds a better sound level control. Maybe Sonos receives a % of revenues from streaming services and this is a manner to increase profits (having users subscribing to more than one musical service) ?

Ken_Griffiths

Good morning to you,

I do not know about all speakers in the house but I would say they are all equally suffering from the sound boost. I did not notice when it did start but for sure I cannot have Apple Music + Sonos active for work or when going to bed. Hence, I reactivated my Spotify account and added newest playlist through Soundizz. Using Spotify Connect generates the lowest sound but Spotify through Sonos adds a better sound level control. Maybe Sonos receives a % of revenues from streaming services and this is a manner to increase profits (having users subscribing to more than one musical service) ?

Dunno, we mostly use Amazon Music HD (that’s our primary service) mainly because of its higher quality audio availability on Sonos. The Apple subscription is because that allows access to our iCloud uploaded ‘ripped’ music and it is a good fallback/alternative if "Amazon music is playing on another device”.

We have a 3 month Deezer subscription that was won in a competition and Spotify ‘free’ is installed ..er.. because it’s free.

I’m just not seeing a huge difference in volume-levels at 1% - yes (of course) there are some differences, but nothing that I would call so significant that it would cause me to switch away from Apple, or any other music service for that matter… so that’s why I wondered if this was just happening on some Sonos products only?

T

Tom_69Author

Enthusiast II

Maybe the only solution is to all of us move away from Apple Music to Spotify ? Like all of you I cannot work anymore with volume set to 1 in the whole house (using 12 Sonos products). Another solution might be to sell Sonos products and to buy newer and better equipment from other sound manufacturers. The only sure thing is that staying as is = not the solution. I will evaluate my options and decide what I will remove to solve this key issue.

Just curious, as the Wife and I use Apple Music too (amongst other MSP’s, like Deezer and Amazon Music, aswell as Spotify free version), but do you find this 1% volume-level troubling on all your Sonos products?

We have a Ray, two Era 100s and Sub in our Kitchen/Diner area (as an example) which is about 14’ square in size and the Wife and I would struggle to hear the Apple audio in that room at that low level of 1% even with the surrounds set to ‘Full’ rather than ‘Ambient’.. So I’m just wondering if you find it occurs on just some Sonos products?

In fact there’s not that much of a huge difference between each of the services at 1% volume - nothing that I would be too concerned about at least, to even think to mention it. I guess though that the Wife and I are approx. 6 feet away from each of the speakers (give or take) when we sit around the breakfast bar.

Our Fridge would drown out the sound completely at that 1% volume level, quite easily, I would say.

The issue is apparent on all of my Sonos devices.

2x Play 1’s, Era 100, Play 3, Roam and the latest gen Five.

Ken_Griffiths

@Tom_69,

Really? …Taking my two Roams, just as one example here, I would really struggle to hear those at 1% volume level. That’s even if they were grouped, or stereo paired and positioned right next to me.

I wonder why different Sonos users are hearing such a huge difference🤔?

I recently did a routine hearing test (result attached) and that was passed with quite a good result. At least I’m not (yet) a candidate for a hearing aid, it seems.

T

Tom_69Author

Enthusiast II

This volume issue is still not fixed in version 16.0, Apple Music is still noticeably louder than other music sources.

skullc

Prodigy III

@Tom_69

its one of the reasons I got rid of Apple Music the gain was to high for my tastes and I don’t listen to atmos music…

Network= livewire cpe pro 3 +eero 6 pro wireless

N

Nap Champ

Lyricist I

This wasn’t a problem in the previous 4-5 years and I don’t use Apple Music. Live TV, Spotify, Audacy, Amazon Music, Pandora and Xbox are all too loud.

This is 1% at 10’ away.

Airgetlam

That’s definitely odd. I’d probably want to power cycle the speakers first, to force them to reload, and if it continues, I’d call Sonos Support directly to discuss it.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

Bruce

T

Tom_69Author

Enthusiast II

This wasn’t a problem in the previous 4-5 years and I don’t use Apple Music. Live TV, Spotify, Audacy, Amazon Music, Pandora and Xbox are all too loud.

This is 1% at 10’ away.

Which speaker is this on? I’ve been doing more testing since the last update and I’ve found an added variable which was not present previously. Interesting to see if it’s just me.

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