Richard Wright - Wet Dream -26
Blur - The Ballad Of Darren -18
Rush - Signals -23
Kiss - Creatures Of The Night -18
Not that I’m aware of.Thanks, any other Steven Wilson Atmos mixes that have a different dialog norm than -31?
Apologies, but I'm not quite sure what this is about? But it sounds interesting. Are you talking about how the menu music can be at a very different default level to the music when you play it?
Thanks!DialNorm is a parameter in the metadata of Dolby streams (both Dolby Digital and TrueHD) that tells the amp to adjust the volume by a certain number of dB. The thinking (in simple terms) is that if you set your amp to a certain volume, anything you play back should come out of your speakers at roughly the same level. But we know that mixing engineers all work in different ways, so the end product can vary from mix to mix, from a volume perspective.
DialNorm allows the mastering engineer (who gets the files after the mix engineer exports them) to use some fancy shmancy tools (and their golden ears) to calculate the overall "loudness" of the content, and then set the DialNorm parameter appropriately. Because exporting and encoding DD+/TrueHD Atmos is a more convoluted and time-consuming process than exporting or working with a standard PCM mix, DialNorm makes doing volume adjustments a lot more easy. Let's say for example that the mastering engineer came to the conclusion that the Atmos mix he was mastering was 3dB over the acceptable loudness limit - if DialNorm didn't exist, he'd have to send it back to the mix engineer and ask him to lower the volume by 3dB and re-export it. With DialNorm, the mastering engineer just takes the file he already has and adjusts the DialNorm parameter (-31dB is no change, so -28dB would give you the 3dB reduction) and it's done.
So taking that into account, you can see some of those mixes listed above that have a -18dB DialNorm value come out of your amp much quieter than the ones that have the -31dB value - 13dB to be exact. So you end up having to turn your volume control up to counteract this reduction - to me it's a stupid and unnecessary system for music.
At least on physical media all the songs on an album have the same DialNorm value - on streaming releases, it seems like often when a leadoff single (or singles) precede the release of the entire album, the singles have a different value than the rest of the tracks. There are some albums I like where I have to constantly ride the volume control because of these values, the worst of which are sometimes 12-15dB apart, and to me this seems like the polar opposite of what automated volume adjustment metadata should do - it should be making it (like ReplayGain does perfectly for FLAC and mp3) so that you never have to touch the volume control from song to song or album to album.
There are some AVRs that allow you to defeat DialNorm, but they're few and far between and there often isn't information about whether they do or not unless you get into the guts of the configuration menus. The bigger question is, when will we get software tools (like eac3to or mkvtoolnix) that allow us to strip DialNorm data (or set it as we wish) and/or software support in Kodi, JRiver, VLC, and other media players for disabling DialNorm? I'm sure eventually some bright spark will tackle it, but at the moment it's kind of a 'wince and bear it' situation.
There are some AVRs that allow you to defeat DialNorm, but they're few and far between and there often isn't information about whether they do or not unless you get into the guts of the configuration menus. The bigger question is, when will we get software tools (like eac3to or mkvtoolnix) that allow us to strip DialNorm data (or set it as we wish) and/or software support in Kodi, JRiver, VLC, and other media players for disabling DialNorm? I'm sure eventually some bright spark will tackle it, but at the moment it's kind of a 'wince and bear it' situation.
Sadly, not only is it an issue with the released singles, but the issue also goes way beyond that. Good to know it isn't an issue with Blu-ray and yet another reason to get the physical release. Gravity Stairs streaming version has "DN" issues throughout.At least on physical media all the songs on an album have the same DialNorm value - on streaming releases, it seems like often when a leadoff single (or singles) precede the release of the entire album, the singles have a different value than the rest of the tracks.
I took a quick look at the 2 main content .m2ts files from the blu-ray and they're the correct expected -31dB for what that's worth.What about Who's Next? Volume seems to be low compared to other Atmos mixes.
You've made this statement before, but after investigating and asking a user with a 2020 Marantz 7015 who has actually tested some of the known problem tracks, this setting has absolutely no effect which is not entirely surprising as this would be huge news. This was also confirmed by another user.As far is I know, Denon & Marantz are the only manufacturers that allow for dial norm to be defeated. They call it "loudness management" - just turn that setting off and you are set. Seems to only be available on most 2019+ models. All that being said - maybe someone who is more knowledgable can tell me if I'm drinking the kool aid and imagining things - when I learned about this setting a few years ago, when I would crank the volume up on Tidal with dial norm disabled, I thought that leaving dial norm on was a cleaner sound, albeit having to turn the volume up so high was a non-starter considering if I played something without dial norm and forgot to adjust the volume back down, I would blow my ears up.
You've made this statement before, but after investigating and asking a user with a 2020 Marantz 7015 who has actually tested some of the known problem tracks, this setting has absolutely no effect which is not entirely surprising as this would be huge news. This was also confirmed by another user.
Can you please say exactly which model Denon/Marantz AVR(s) and which known problem atmos tracks have you tested and from which music service(s)?
Note that there has always been a way on Denon/Marantz AVRs to ignore Dolby Dialnorm on a track by track basis which is essentially useless.
I believe this idea is impossible unfortunately.(IMO this all just reinforces how much we need someone to write some software to reset DialNorm values to -31dB, or add the functionality to eac3to or similar, but that's another story.)
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