Q: ReplayGain -x.y dB, zz% Peak - differences between TIDAL and Qobuz

[medon]

Hey there,

could somebody enlighten me?

My streamer (Auralic) displays ReplayGain data in its control app.
Comparing two streaming services Qobuz and TIDAL with the very same albums (and masters, 99% sure) there's different ReplayGain values between the two services.

Output level is the same, at least what I can hear and what my amp's VU meters indicate.

Also, sound quality seems identical, even if I sometimes believe in non-blind testing that Qobuz might sound a tad better. Probably illusion.

Now here's my question:
What's the relation between the ReplayGain -x.y dB value, and the indicated Peak percentage?

Where I'm stumbling is that I believe all streaming services get their (uncompressed/lossless compressed) data from some giant sound data distribution services.
Then, the end customer services (Qobuz, TIDAL, Spotify, others...) do their thing with the data and send it to the customers device.

Since both Qobuz and TIDAL stream in FLAC (lossless), the different ReplayGain values seem to hint at some sort of different volume normalization between these two services.

Still, in most cases the indicated "Peak" value is close / the same.

Puzzled.

 

[gregorio]

Comparing two streaming services Qobuz and TIDAL with the very same albums (and masters, 99% sure) there's different ReplayGain values between the two services.

Output level is the same, at least what I can hear and what my amp's VU meters indicate.

It’s called “Loudness Normalisation” and different services Normalise to different levels. For example YouTube normalises to around -13dB(LKFS), while Apple Music is around -16.5LKFS and TV broadcast in North America is -24LKFS. The point of RG is of course that the output level varies according to the RG gain level, unless your playback device is set to ignore RG or unless there is some other processing occurring somewhere (compression or limiting for example). Incidentally, VU meters do not measure peak levels.

What's the relation between the ReplayGain -x.y dB value, and the indicated Peak percentage?

The track should be reduced in level by ReplayGain amount. So if the RG is say -3dB and the track peak level is -0.1dB, the output peak level would be -3.1dB. However, if the RG is a positive number then the peak value maybe higher or the same as before loudness normalisation, so there isn’t always a relation between ReplayGain and peak level.

G

 

[medon]

Found an album on Qobuz and Tidal that seems to have the very same data, recorded some seconds via SPDIF. It's bit perfect identical between the two streaming services. (Scritti Politti / Provision).

The peak-value is identical, but the RHG value is different - TIDAL's is lower by about 4dB.

Both services sound identical with my streamer / DAC, so they don't seem to care about the RG anyway.