[steaxauce]

I've noticed that volume normalization is even more detrimental to sound quality than compression, so I want to find a streaming music library that streams in at least 128kbps (preferably higher, of course), has a good selection of music, and does not use volume normalization. Anyone know of one?

Thanks guys!

 

[blessingx]

You're trying to stream your library or are you referring to a third party?

And volume normalization isn't inherently worse than compression. In fact neither is inherently bad (lossless, finely tweaked ReplayGain, etc.). Either can be very bad though.

In fact I'm normalizing my library with iVolume right now.

 

[carlosgp]

Volume normalization bad? Why? If you are doing it right it shouldn't be any problem.

I'm normalizing with iVolume too. Great software.

 

[joe_cool]

I use replay gain with Foobar, set to album mode. I don't feel it degrades the perceived quality since I send everything to the DAC at 24-bit via ASIO.

This may not be the same as "normalization" which can cause problems with some modern recordings due to heavy compression.

 

[Slogra]

I guess he is talking about dynamic compression that all normal radio stations use to maximize the volume. Since a lot of internet radio stations are based on a real radio station stream the dynamic compression is also there. This makes the music sounds like utter crap, unlike replaygain which keeps the original dynamics.

 

[steaxauce]

Perhaps that's what it is, Slogra. I don't know. With Pandora, for instance, rock music never goes above around -7db, where it's usually close to 0db when I play unprocessed music off of my hard drive. It has a very noticeable flatness to it. With classical music that's mostly quieter, there's obtrusive clipping in the louder passages. Turning Pandora's volume control down helps with this. I bought a Napster subscription, and Napster sounds infinitely better than Pandora, but it's still not perfect. When I said the volume normalization harmed sound quality more than compression, I was talking about lossy data compression. I can hear the difference between 128kbps and lossless in a blind test, but the effects of the volume normalization these streaming music servers use are obvious, and a deal breaker for their services. I know volume normalization is supposed to preserve the original dynamics, but I suspect that what I'm hearing is digital artifacts of the processing. What I'm hoping for is a streaming music server that doesn't use processing of any kind, so it'll sound exactly like playing music off of my HD.

BTW, I don't suppose it's relevant, but just in case, I'm using an E-MU 1616M with ED9.

 

[Slogra]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steaxauce /img/forum/go_quote.gif I know volume normalization is supposed to preserve the original dynamics, but I suspect that what I'm hearing is digital artifacts of the processing.

I don't believe this is true. I think all radio stations use dynamic compression. Which not only mess up the dynamics in a song, it usually also maximizes the volume into distortion.
This distortion turns up everywhere in the music, because each and every little piece of the music is maximized.
With lossy compression this becomes an even larger problem because lossy compression is not prefect. So peaks can be higher (or lower) than the original source. So when the peaks are higher you get even more distortion.

A partly fix is using Foobar2000 and set the decoding volume lower. That way you can bypass the extra distortion caused by lossy compression.

Another problem might be that those radio station recompress from an already lossy source.

 

[joe_cool]

From post #6: "When I said the volume normalization harmed sound quality more than compression, I was talking about lossy data compression."

Re-evaluating post #1: "I've noticed that <lossy data compression> (volume normalization) is even more detrimental to sound quality than compression."

If you want streaming audio (on the internet) without lossy compression then good luck with that. The main purpose of streaming audio is to reduce the required bandwidth and that requires compression of some sort.