Why do audio formats use a linear scale, instead of exponential (like our ears seems to use)?
Some audio formats do use a non-linear scale, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9C-law_algorithm
Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
21–30 of 45 posts
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered that this may be by design? Have you considered paying for the service?
Of course it's by design. And sure, I've considered paying for it, but I don't. Does that mean my complaints about the free service are somehow invalid? I'm still a customer, just a different kind of customer, and if they make the experience bad enough for me that I avoid it in some circumstances, that's relevant to their interests. If they didn't want free-tier customers, they wouldn't be offering the free-tier serv…
The free tier is to get paid users. If you have no chance of being paid, Spotify hardly cares whether you stay or go.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#23It's hard to trust a service like this without some information on where they pull the numbers from. How did they determine which normalization algorithm each service uses?
The "give us your email address for more information" part also seems slimy.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#24I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
If you can find it, listen to the original version of the Dire Straits album "Dire Straits" -- Then listen to it with volume normalization. Dynamic range is good...
Excessive dynamic range compression wasn't done at that time and many records were well mastered. Other good examples are Pink Floyd and even Led Zeppelin records. Not generally considered audiophile quality, but they just sound great.
Back then these records were made to be played back on big hi-hi systems. Big speakers that filled the room and were placed far away from the listener. This is not a standard setup today. You're more likely to see music played from wimpy TV speakers, headphones or earbuds.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#25I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
The idea is that clueless execs force mastering engineers to heavily compress the recordings to make them "loud". This shows the execs that if they do that, the streaming services will undo any extra "loudness" leaving them with just a compressed record.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it's by design. And sure, I've considered paying for it, but I don't. Does that mean my complaints about the free service are somehow invalid? I'm still a customer, just a different kind of customer, and if they make the experience bad enough for me that I avoid it in some circumstances, that's relevant to their interests. If they didn't want free-tier customers, they wouldn't be offering the free-tier serv…
The free tier is to get paid users. If you have no chance of being paid, Spotify hardly cares whether you stay or go.
I’m sure Spotify would rather everyone that isn’t going to pay use their free product than move to competitor X.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#27Interesting idea, but personally I like the Dynamic Range (DR) measurement developed by the Pleasurize Music Foundation more. It also provides a one-value output that has a direct relation to the statistics of the input audio, and AFAIK it is a somewhat established measurand in audio engineering.
Self-plug: A while back I reverse-engineered the DR algorithm and implemented it as a Python script. It's [DRmeter on GitHub](https://github.com/janw/drmeter).
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
But this isn't changing the dynamic range. It's not normalizing the song on it's own. It's normalizing the with regard to the rest of the musical catalogue, which simply amounts to turning the volume down a certain amount on the whole song. So, to repeat, that changes noting about the dynamic range of the song. In fact, if music producers stopped trying to make their music so loud, there would be more room for dynami…
it is limiting the high end volume which.... changes the dynamic range. [0] Listen to a good recording of something like The William Tell Overture and you should notice that the quiet parts are less than 10% or so of volume of the loud parts. Listening to that Dire Straits album really illustrates the point. 0: https://www.emusician.com/gear/brickwall-limiting
Loudness normalisation and limiting are different things.
Limiting is about turning down the music when it peaks above a certain threshold measured in decibels, and loudness normalisation is about normalising music to its perceived loudness, measured in LUFS.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#29Ironic that Spotify will apparently penalize the music for being "too loud" when their ads are regularly ear-splittingly loud. It's egregious. When listening with earbuds, I have to have a quick reaction on the volume control because the commercials literally hurt my ears.
Have you considered that this may be by design? Have you considered paying for the service?
Having the free version cause permanent disabilities is not a smart design at all.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#30Interesting idea, but personally I like the Dynamic Range (DR) measurement developed by the Pleasurize Music Foundation more. It also provides a one-value output that has a direct relation to the statistics of the input audio, and AFAIK it is a somewhat established measurand in audio engineering. Self-plug: A while back I reverse-engineered the DR algorithm and implemented it as a Python script. It's [DRmeter on GitH…
Is that similar to what replaygain uses for adjusting loudness?