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dynamic range compression / peak normalization


blaubär

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13 minutes ago, blaubär said:

When travelling I use the Sony WH1000 XM2 Headphones with active noise cancelling. These are the best I could get and afford. Nethertheless it's difficult to listen to dynamic music. A dynamic range compressor might help.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Asking just from curiosity, you need a compressor to decrease dynamic range in order to compensate loud environmrent? Usually the extensive and senseless use of compressor make the qualityh worse.

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44 minutes ago, NickIst said:

Usually the extensive and senseless use of compressor make the qualityh worse. 

Yes, it does ! Therefore I would use it intensively and sensibly 🙂

My use case is not further decreasing a small dynamic range, but the slight decrease of a large dynamic range in case I can't hear the quiet parts of classical music due to unavoidable outside noise.

A quiet environment would be preferable of course, but that isn't always an option.

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15 minutes ago, blaubär said:

I can't hear the quiet parts of classical music due to unavoidable outside noise.

As I thought. Thus it could be useful for some genres of music. I listen to rock and its derivatives, in which DR higher than 12-14 is rarity.

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I strongly support this and was about to propose it myself. I listen to a wide variety of genres from pop to classical to vintage jazz to country to dance, etc, while on the road.

A vehicle can be a generally noisy environment which is why radio stations broadcast music through a compressor in order to make each whole song listenable. The same goes for shops and other public establishments that play music over the intercoms. I would absolutely love to have this ability in Poweramp. I ran all (currently) 400+ of my mp3 songs through Audacity which has a compressor option. It was a tedious process as you can only do one song individually. It did help, but the results are simply not the same as what store intercoms and radio stations can achieve. I'll bet an implemented feature on Poweramp could even do better.

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In my case it's the JBL filp 3 speaker that does not respond to frequency lower than 60Hz, which some songs sound strange with that issue. 

I need this feature as well as the people in this thread. It should be much easier to code than the reverb, right? 

p.s. If possible, please also add a button to disable pitch normalization during tempo adjustment. That is extremely useful for Nightcore songs! :)

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The problem is no matter how much we want it, someone always comes up with something saying it should not be added and never does. ALWAYS! I am all for the normalization feature for volume too but here comes the ones that say use replaygain that is already in the player, and that is BS there because it never works. I tried it too. With over 22,000 songs, that would take forever just to add new replaygain to the tags. I also did a little amount of mp3s this way and it did not work. So this should be implemented but they don't want to bother with what should be done.

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ReplayGain does work. However it is not the same as Normalisation / AGC, as it only looks at the peak levels for the whole track, and makes a single gain adjustment to the entire track, not tweaking the volume up and down 'on'the-fly'. It can also reduce the volume of over-loud tracks, it does not always just increase levels.

And yes, properly updating the tags on 22,000 tracks might take a little while, but it's a once-and-done batch task that you just set going on your computer and leave it to do it. My main music folder on my PC (with a lot more files in it than I've got copied to my phone) took about 45 minutes to batch process 10,000 or so files in foobar2000. I didn't check how many were already tagged (the majority of them I suspect), I just re-tagged the lot.

Personally, I would not object to Normalisation being added as an option though. OK, it does mess with the technical fidelity of your music, but would be useful for car journeys and in otherwise noisy environments.

Andre

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@andrewilley However, it's different on my situation. As I said before, 

On 2/28/2020 at 2:37 AM, Crericper said:

In my case it's the JBL filp 3 speaker that does not respond to frequency lower than 60Hz, which some songs sound strange without sub 60Hz frequency. 

Compressor is greatly helpful on fixing that. And also, 

On 2/28/2020 at 2:37 AM, Crericper said:

If possible, please also add a button to disable pitch normalization during tempo adjustment. That will be extremely useful for some Nightcore songs! :)

 

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4 hours ago, Crericper said:

@andrewilley However, it's different on my situation. As I said before, 

Compressor is greatly helpful on fixing that. And also, 

Not sure how a compressor (which adjusts the gain to alter- or normalise - the overall dynamic range) would specifically affect low frequencies, that's more the job of an EQ.

Andre 

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28 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

that's more the job of an EQ.

Oh, I thought compressor is a feature is to shift frequency from e.g. 20Hz to 60Hz, which, you know, is somehow similar to the HDR filter in photography, to compress audio dynamic range. And I'm also not sure if there is anything existing like that. 😂

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1 hour ago, Crericper said:

Oh, I thought compressor is a feature is to shift frequency from e.g. 20Hz to 60Hz, w

Definitely not, that would generally be a Very bad Thing for the integrity of your music.

A normaliser / compressor (aka AGC - Automatic Gain Control) does indeed compress audio dynamic range, but what that means is adjusting the gain (volume) during playback so that quieter passages are played back a bit louder, while louder parts of the music are softened a bit. This produces a more even overall level, which is good for listening in noisy environments (where quiet sections can get drowned out) or at night when you don't want sudden very loud bursts to wake the neighbours up. :)  

Andre

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