Sync Volume Leveling questions [#7455]

[mcow]

The options for Volume Leveling set a target for playback, for leveling, and for "ripping audio CDs". Both playback and ripping also allow the leveling to be "per album" or "per track".

1) How does the level-during-rip work? Doesn't the whole track have to already be ripped to analyze it before it can be leveled?

2) When leveling during conversion (e.g from FLAC to MP3), is one of those per-track vs per-album settings used? If not, how is the leveling adjustment chosen when both are present?

[nohitter151]

The options for Volume Leveling set a target for playback, for leveling, and for "ripping audio CDs". Both playback and ripping also allow the leveling to be "per album" or "per track".

1) How does the level-during-rip work? Doesn't the whole track have to already be ripped to analyze it before it can be leveled?

2) When leveling during conversion (e.g from FLAC to MP3), is one of those per-track vs per-album settings used? If not, how is the leveling adjustment chosen when both are present?

1. No. Basically it will do "Level track volume" on the file as it's ripped.
2. If you level during conversion, both values are ignored and "Level track volume" is applied during the conversion. The leveling in that case is done per-track, not per-album.

[mcow]

The options for Volume Leveling set a target for playback, for leveling, and for "ripping audio CDs". Both playback and ripping also allow the leveling to be "per album" or "per track".

1) How does the level-during-rip work? Doesn't the whole track have to already be ripped to analyze it before it can be leveled?

2) When leveling during conversion (e.g from FLAC to MP3), is one of those per-track vs per-album settings used? If not, how is the leveling adjustment chosen when both are present?

1. No. Basically it will do "Level track volume" on the file as it's ripped.
2. If you level during conversion, both values are ignored and "Level track volume" is applied during the conversion. The leveling in that case is done per-track, not per-album.

I'm curious to know how confident you are in your response. Are you familiar with the code that does this, are you relying on a help file I haven't been able to find, or are you just assuming certain behaviors?

1. I don't understand this. First, I don't know what you mean by it will do "Level track volume" on the file. Doesn't "Level track volume" mean "apply the gain that has been stored with this track" (or album)? Second, how can it know how much gain to apply when the future is unknown?

2. Per-track is wrong; it needs to be per-album. I want to be able to play the album at a consistent volume to itself.

[nohitter151]

The options for Volume Leveling set a target for playback, for leveling, and for "ripping audio CDs". Both playback and ripping also allow the leveling to be "per album" or "per track".

1) How does the level-during-rip work? Doesn't the whole track have to already be ripped to analyze it before it can be leveled?

2) When leveling during conversion (e.g from FLAC to MP3), is one of those per-track vs per-album settings used? If not, how is the leveling adjustment chosen when both are present?

1. No. Basically it will do "Level track volume" on the file as it's ripped.
2. If you level during conversion, both values are ignored and "Level track volume" is applied during the conversion. The leveling in that case is done per-track, not per-album.

I'm curious to know how confident you are in your response. Are you familiar with the code that does this, are you relying on a help file I haven't been able to find, or are you just assuming certain behaviors?

1. I don't understand this. First, I don't know what you mean by it will do "Level track volume" on the file. Doesn't "Level track volume" mean "apply the gain that has been stored with this track" (or album)? Second, how can it know how much gain to apply when the future is unknown?

2. Per-track is wrong; it needs to be per-album. I want to be able to play the album at a consistent volume to itself.

I have been around here a long time. Trust me, I know.

1. No, that is not what it means. The difference between the two options (as has already been asked and answered probably several hundred times in this forum) is that "Analyze track volume" simply puts a number into the MM database/track tag which is used by MediaMonkey (and possibly other devices which can read it) to increase/decrease the volume as the track is played. If this value were to be deleted/removed, then the track would play at its original level. "Level track volume" actually modifies the waveform of the file, so not only can all programs/players play the track at the modified volume, but also the process cannot be reversed. The leveling adjustment chosen for level track volume is simply always calculated using a standard volume level (ie 89dB), not in reference to other tracks.

2. Then I suppose you should level the tracks while ripping, and not use volume leveling on the fly.

[mcow]

I have been around here a long time. Trust me, I know.

Um... no. Unless you're a MM developer, your answers are suspect until you prove yourself. And quite frankly, you have proved yourself to be not very helpful.

1. No, that is not what it means. The difference between the two options (as has already been asked and answered probably several hundred times in this forum) is that "Analyze track volume" simply puts a number into the MM database/track tag which is used by MediaMonkey (and possibly other devices which can read it) to increase/decrease the volume as the track is played. If this value were to be deleted/removed, then the track would play at its original level. "Level track volume" actually modifies the waveform of the file, so not only can all programs/players play the track at the modified volume, but also the process cannot be reversed. The leveling adjustment chosen for level track volume is simply always calculated using a standard volume level (ie 89dB), not in reference to other tracks.

Actually, I already understood the difference between Analyze and Level. What I do not understand is how the gain for a given track (or a given album) can be determined before the entire track has been read. A track that starts quiet but gets loud needs a lower gain than a track that starts quiet and stays quiet. Therefore, my original question still stands:

Doesn't the whole track have to already be ripped to analyze it before it can be leveled?

But, don't worry about it. This question was for my information only, because I don't use MediaMonkey to rip—I use Exact Audio Copy, like all informed audiophiles do.

2. Then I suppose you should level the tracks while ripping, and not use volume leveling on the fly.

Again: not ripping with MediaMonkey.

MediaMonkey has almost provided the feature I need: it performs analysis per album, and it provides an option to use that level—but only for playback. (Even this isn't completely useful, as MM doesn't level FLACs on playback, only MP3s.) For MP3s on my portable (which doesn't know how to level, let alone select between per-track or per-album), leveling is only available per-track. It seems to me glaringly obvious that if someone prefers playback with per-album leveling, then they very likely prefer conversion with per-album leveling.

And now, since you pissed me off enough to spend time searching, I find this is already in the bugs database—and long ignored.

If you want to be helpful, get the developers to pay some attention to that bug.

[nohitter151]

Doesn't the whole track have to already be ripped to analyze it before it can be leveled?

The track is ripped first (to wav file). Then the volume leveling takes place. Then the file is encoded to your format of choice. This all takes place "behind-the-scenes" so it's essentially "during ripping", which is why I said that earlier.

And now, since you pissed me off enough to spend time searching, I find this is already in the bugs database—and long ignored.

If you want to be helpful, get the developers to pay some attention to that bug.

Why are "pissed"? I answered your question. Next time, I'll be sure to just ignore it!

[Peke]

@mcow
Bug You refer to is Old and your explanation in first post shows exactly that. Lvl per track on Sync/convert is used due the better overall playback quality. You are first that want Level Synched tracks by Album Gain index. So basically you only want that in Device Settings under Auto-Conversion you also have choice to Level tracks according to Album Gain Index and not to Track only?

Added http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=7455

Others correctly answered by Nohitter151

[rusty]

Correction:
Jiri reviewed the code, and it turns out that Album Gain settings _are_ applied to syncronization--we just never updated the online help / context help.

I've revised bug #7455 to reflect the fact that the help and UI need to be updated.

-Rusty

[mcow]

it turns out that Album Gain settings _are_ applied to syncronization--we just never updated the online help / context help.

I've revised bug #7455 to reflect the fact that the help and UI need to be updated.

Syncronization meaning during to device? That's not exactly what I'm looking for.

I want to be able to convert (Tools | Convert Audio Format) a FLAC with the per-album level stored as a property into a leveled MP3, whether on the device or on the hard disk. If the FLAC has both per-album and per-track values, I want the per-album value to be used. Does that happen, or not?

It would be good if the same leveling behavior was used whether explicitly converting or when converting as part of synchronization.

Also, it's not clear whether an MP3 with leveling info gets leveled during sync or just copied.

[Lowlander]

During sync it depends on your settings. If you don't set to level volume in the Device Profile it won't level.

[mcow]

So I've been thinking more, and I have an idea for testing what I want to know, but the results are inconclusive.

Here's the workflow:
Rip CD direct into FLAC. Analyze volume of tracks including album volume. Convert (not sync) the tracks to MP3 with leveling turned on.
My question: were all the tracks leveled with the same attenuation (album), or leveled individually?

rusty wrote: "Album Gain settings _are_ applied to syncronization" but I still don't know if Album gain is applied when converting files (that is, on the hard disc).

To test this, I took (a copy of) the leveled MP3s and analyzed them. The results don't make much sense to me, but I don't know exactly how the math is supposed to work here.

With a 98dB target for leveling, I see these results:

Code: Select all

            FLAC            MP3
             (not)           (leveled)
Album       +8.2            +7.0

trk1       +11.1            +8.3
trk2        +7.0            +5.9
trk3        +9.2            +7.6
trk4        +9.3            +6.3
trk5       +10.9            +9.9
trk6        +6.8            +5.8

I expected that the analyzed gain of a leveled track would be 0.0, but that isn't the case for either the album volumes or the track volumes. I can think of several reasons why not: volume compression or clipping during leveling, and the differences in the signal between lossless and MP3 compression. I don't know the math involved.

If all the tracks were leveled at their individual volumes, I would have expected the post-leveling analysis to yield the same gain for each track, which it does not here. But, since I don't know the math, I'm not sure if my expectation is correct for this, either.