Apple Music Equalizing the volumes of iTunes/Apple Match and Apple Lossless songs

[darngooddesign]

I have been slowly replacing my old purchased and AAC-ripped songs with Lossless files but quite a few are not available as lossless. The difference in quality doesn't bother me, but the lossless tracks are louder than the AAC tracks which makes shuffling-all from an artist a bit annoying. What's the best way to equalize the volumes? Does SoundCheck work well for this?

 

[bgsd_4332]

I don't have lossless, but I've been wondering about this for years. When playing from my (local iTunes) Music server, I have to babysit the volume, as it goes from "can't hear it" to "Concert" level loud. Even with sound-check & equalizer on, it still doesn't work as expected. I wish there was a "midnight" mode in IOS Music app, where you could set min/max volumes & then forget about it.

 

[TonyC28]

Volumes are horribly inconsistent on Apple Music. I was listening to the
London Philharmonic Orchestra & Similar Artists Station on my HomePods and had to constantly adjust the volume. Super annoying.

 

[kagharaht]

Has anyone used iVolume to try and normalize these tracks?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Differing loudness has always been an issue with records. What the record sounds like has always been up to the artist, producer, engineers, record company, and so on. For an LP/Album, they'd strive to make it consistent across all the tracks…but they didn't care if the loudness was different from other records.

If you grew up listening to music on commercial radio the loudness difference wasn't that noticeable because radio stations run their output through a lot of compression and limiting ("brick wall" limiting)…making every song the just about the same loudness coming out of your car or home radio. Depending on the record, this could also dramatically change (for the worse) the intended dynamics of the song…but everyone just kinda went with it.

Now we have streaming of the original recordings without all the compression and limiting and jumping from song to song from various albums is jarring. Things like "Soundcheck" try to level things out (it's just an overall volume adjustment with no dynamics processing) but nothing does it like the old sledgehammer of compression and limiting.

Unless Apple offers up another setting that squashes the music like radio does you'll likely just have to live with it.

In macOS or Windows, you could feasibly route the output of the Music app through another app…which would perform the compression/limiting…and then out to your playback device.

 

[darngooddesign]

Differing loudness has always been an issue with records. What the record sounds like has always been up to the artist, producer, engineers, record company, and so on. For an LP/Album, they'd strive to make it consistent across all the tracks…but they didn't care if the loudness was different from other records.

That's not what I'm referring to. Apple lossless tracks are consistently, so it has nothing to do with how specific albums or tracks on an album were mastered, louder than Apple's own AAC files, even AAC version of the same album purchased from Apple.

 

[BrianBaughn]

That's not what I'm referring to. Apple lossless tracks are consistently, so it has nothing to do with how specific albums or tracks on an album were mastered, louder than Apple's own AAC files, even AAC version of the same album purchased from Apple.

So you're saying that, for you, if it weren't for the Lossless tracks Apple Music would be playing all the different songs at a close enough volume level to be acceptable?

Did you try Soundcheck on?

 

[darngooddesign]

So you're saying that, for you, if it weren't for the Lossless tracks Apple Music would be playing all the different songs at a close enough volume level to be acceptable?

Yes. My iPad, which does not play streaming and downloaded lossless songs, does not have the same volume issue.

Did you try Soundcheck on?

Soundcheck chokes on my 16k song library and makes the Music app unresponsive with the MBP's fan roaring.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Soundcheck chokes on my 16k song library and makes the Music app unresponsive with the MBP's fan roaring.

Is that because it's indexing the Soundcheck data for songs that aren't from the Apple Music service? I don't remember hearing of that but it makes complete sense.

Do you think the crashing/lockup is due to overheating?

 

[darngooddesign]

Is that because it's indexing the Soundcheck data for songs that aren't from the Apple Music service? I don't remember hearing of that but it makes complete sense.

Do you think the crashing/lockup is due to overheating?

The overheating is due to it locking up; the fans ramp up to 6K RPM within fifteen seconds of turning on sound check.

 

[killsapo]

I’ve always had (still have) this problem with Apple Music on my Mac: lossless streaming is fantastic through my stereo, but if I add external files - not available on Apple’s streaming service, for example some Bandcamp downloads - no matter their quality they sound soooooo low compared to Apple’s own. If I open them in other apps (even in FInder’s preview) they sound fine and full-volumey, but as soon as I add them to Apple Music they sound like a whisper.

I surrendered, any music outside Apple Music on my library is sounding at baby crib volume ¯\_(ツ)_/¯