Server Version#: 1.41.2.9200
Player Version#: Plexamp Windows v4.11.2
Hello! I have a mix of CD and vinyl rips which I manage using MusicBee, mirror to Plex Server Linux, and listen to primarily using the Windows Plexamp client.
I have enabled Loudness Leveling and allowed Plex to “analyze” my library but I still seem to be having the issue that my vinyl rips are significantly quieter through Plexamp than other sources. This is particularly evident when listening to playlists that combine multiple sources, as well as comparing playback of the same file between Plexamp and MusicBee itself.
As an example, I analyzed the same file both in MusicBee and Plex - here are the analysis results:
MusicBee: track: +9.3 dB, album: +8.1 dB
Plex Track: Gain +6.15, Loudness -27.30, Lra +5.16, Peak +0.582550
Plex Album: Gain +6.15, Peak +0.582550, Range 6.035998
This does not seem to be as much of a problem with CD rips - for example one of my CD tracks is still quietest in Plexamp (but not by much) and the Plex web client is actually louder than MusicBee.
Any thoughts on why this is happening, and how to fix it? Thanks so much!
Plex will adapt all tracks of an album together. Which means if even only one of those tracks has a loud, nasty pop or click from your vinyl, it prevents all other tracks from being raised up to their actual required volume. Because Plex still observes the maximum level of a track. If there is actually a sound event with 100 % volume (i.e. a dust click or scratch), it cannot raise the volume of the tracks further because that woulds mean distortion.
Appreciate the response - I don’t think this is what is happening in my case: as a workaround for this scenario I have been using Audacity to normalize my rips to a peak amplitude of -1.0 dB which helps even things out upon playback.
My understanding is that Audacity in this case raises the volume until the loudest peak (most likely a pop or click, as you say) hits that -1.0 dB threshold. This is what I expected that the Loudness Leveling feature was doing under the hood, and this seems to be effective as a workaround in that playback volume is roughly on par with CD sources.
I would be surprised if Audacity is somehow raising the volume of the track while avoiding clipping at the peak(s) but maybe it has some fancy way of doing that, which differs from how Plexamp implements Loudness Leveling.
If the click is still in there, normalizing won’t make any difference.
Normalizing only changes the level of the track as a whole. It doesn’t selectively change only overly loud events, because that would be limiting/compression.
And you don’t want to apply compression to your music, because that would remove almost all of the impetus to keep vinyl rips around. You might as well rip the CD, then.
If you want loudness leveling to work with your vinyl rips, you need to find a way to either avoid those loud clicks and pops while ripping, or remove them (ideally without sonic side effects) altogether, or at least reduce their volume.
Makes sense - and I believe that that is what I am doing when I am manually normalizing using Audacity. In other words, when I initially rip an album, I can see that there is still some headroom above the peaks, which is removed when I run the normalization (so as far as I can tell there is no compression/limiting kicking in).
I think where I am confused is how that manual process differs from what Plexamp’s Loudness Leveling feature is doing - my takeaway from Elan’s response is that LL will only ever decrease the gain of an album/track in which case I don’t think LL is designed to have the effect that I am looking for.
But per the last paragraph of your response, it sounds like LL can increase the gain, so long as there is headroom on the track. So I am trying to figure out why that is not happening in my case since my rips appear to have headroom that I am having to remove ‘manually’ in order to get the result that I want.
