Can you alter the volume setting for a particular ripped CD?

Posted by: GrizzlyHippo on 01 September 2018

Hi All, as the title says, is it possible either in n-serve or the Naim app to change the volume output setting of a particular ripped CD on my UnitiServe? We often play a lor of CDs together on random and there is one (Kaisar Chiefs - Yours Truly, Angry Mob) which plays much louder than all the others on the UnitiServe. Any help treat fully received.

 

Thanks,

Tom

Posted on: 01 September 2018 by Simon-in-Suffolk

What you are hearing almost certainly is different levels of compression, with your Kaiser Chiefs track perhaps being compressed the most. Some media servers can normalise tracks, by stretching the samples.. but if the loudness difference is through dynamic compression this is not going to make much difference and any changes tend to reduce the audio quality as errors can be introduced. This is why in some compilations albums tracks are remastered to make them sound more consistent with each other... often this can be achieved by upping the dynamic compression. Quality audio compressors are quite advanced devices and I have not seen them in consumer ripping software. If you are determined you can get DAW software and remaster your tracks... but it is a lot of effort!!!!!

Posted on: 01 September 2018 by ChrisSU

The Unitiserve can't do this, the only music software I'm aware of that can is iTunes. You could, I suppose, hook an Airport Express up to your streamer, set your US as an iTunes music library, and use that setup for playlists if you use them more for casual listening, and regular UPnP for more serious listening. I say that because I expect you would find a drop in sound quality from this workaround.

Posted on: 01 September 2018 by Bart

MinimServer now reportedly supports replay gain "normalization."  I have not tried it myself but it's non-destructive (does not change the actual data in storage) so no reason not to play with it and see how it sounds.

Posted on: 02 September 2018 by GrizzlyHippo

Thanks for the replies. I will investigate further.

Tom

Posted on: 02 September 2018 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Bart posted:

MinimServer now reportedly supports replay gain "normalization."  I have not tried it myself but it's non-destructive (does not change the actual data in storage) so no reason not to play with it and see how it sounds.

Indeed but it is unlikely to make much difference to the OPs challenge which is almost certainly down to average power level and dynamic compression in the track.

Posted on: 03 September 2018 by Claus

I use Minimserver with replay gain info added to several ripped cd's. Works very well, and for me much preferred to playing these files as recorded/ripped directly from the cd. 

What I do is:
1) Convert wav files to flac. 
2) Add replay gain TAGS to the flac files, average gain from scan as an album. 
3) Minimserver converts flac back to wav when sending files to the ND5. 

With replay gain info added as a tag you can always remove it and get back to the original music file. 

Claus