Does anyone know why Qubuz plays so loud by default? On my system it is bare minimum 10 db louder than playing files from my library via A+. This doesn’t make sense unless the Qubuz has added volume to each album before including in their library.
Granted I can turn the volume down either through A+ or my pre-amp but it shouldn’t be this way in my opinion.
Thanks
Hi @Antoine thanks for the comment and reply. No I have not done this, and in fact not knowing exactly what it does have ignored the Replay Gain button altogether. So I should ask, what exactly is and what does this do?
The loudness of every track is different from each track to another (also for albums), that’s why you have different level of loudness when your listening to your music. Replay Gain is here to have the same loudness for each of your track (or album), you can find replay gain information for each track in the metadata of the file. Unfortunately for track from streaming service this information is not available but you can set Replay Gain in your Audio settings in Audirvana to benefit of it.
I think the issue here is that Qobuz hasn’t added replay gain to any of their files. Why this is, it’s completely beyond me, but just another reason why I think Tidal is superior.
The feed from qobuz is way too loud ,its distorting my convolution AU plugin so i cant use it !!!..the AV volume control is post plugin so how do we turn it down please ?
Does the plugin not have input gain and/or output level adjustments?
Turn the appropriate one - or both of them - down.
Qobuz cannot send the feed too loud. They just send the files as supplied by record companies.
These files have already been mastered and can already be close to the maximum possible in the digital world. Above 0dBFS clipping results.
If there is a gain in the Plug-in then that is the most logical place. Downloading a separate VST gain is also an option. Airwindows purest gain is a free VST.
https://www.airwindows.com/purestgain-vst/
Edit:
Personally I love that there is possibility to apply DSP in Audirvana. And a nice 64bit VST bus has been used. The disadvantage is that applying DSP to a mastered file is not without risk.
The most noticeable is the limited space at the top, clipping. Less perceptible but a risk is that if a considerable gain reduction is applied and convolution DSP that much more information has been added to the bottom of the bits.
In the 64-bit VST bus this is not a problem, but the signal has to go back to a DAC compatible bitstream of 16bit or 24bit. Rounding errors occur here.
interesting explanation ,so because you (audirvana) cant manage to balance the incoming volume of a stream to the relative volume of my library ,i have to run an app when using qobuz to turn it down, then turn it off when listening to my library.is that right ?
Just to be sure, I’m not part of the Audirvana team. This is general information.
What I understand is that you use the replay gain function on your local database. This reduces all tracks to a lower level. This reduces the chance that the signal will clip. But does not prevent it. Depending on added gain by the DSP, there may be some minimal clipping.
Qobuz does not send information about the loudness, which means that Audirvana cannot set the file to the same loudness level. Tidal does send this information. And Qobuz is working on it, as far as I know.
If this is correct then it might help to lower the total volume by 6dB. I’m not sure about this as I have no idea how Audirvana works internally. But it is possible that the 64 bit (floating point) bus is not affected by clipping. And then it’s fine that the volume is turned down at the end of the bus.
I have never used replay gain. So I have no idea what the best practice is within Audirvana. If the replay gain of Qobuz is not yet available via API then it is correct that Qobuz has a difference compared to the local library with replay gain.
I started trialing Qobuz a few days ago and have ran into this, too. It seems all songs played from Qobuz have way too much gain! The waveform display always shows them completely maxed out and clipped. This isn’t true for most of my local lossless music. I always have Volume Leveling off. This is not a ReplayGain issue.
It seems to depend on the track / mix. Most of the jazz I listen to is mixed well (not brick walled), and much of the other prog rock / metal I listen to is also mixed well. However, there’s still quite a bit of the tracks that are just pegged to the wall and pushing the clipping range.
Ironically, I was just listening to the Hi-Res Masters: Metal Essentials playlist. The majority are pegged, and some even have massive clipping and distortion. It’s not like it would be like that just listening to their CD.
And don’t even get me started on that Metallica - The Unforgiven track in that playlist! That is the worst sounding copy of it that I have ever heard! My old tape back in the day sounded better! I have no clue where they’re sourcing this garbage, but it just goes to show you “Hi-Res” does not mean quality audio, necessarily.
Is it as bad as their Death Magnetic album?
Steven Wilson was too busy so they had Brian Johnson do the remaster
I’d bet it would be 127% better in MQA 
You have a lot of variables in studio, plug-ins,upsample,Sox r8brain. Could this be any issue especially plug-ins?
Quote of the day, right there! 
Hey @glen if I could make anyone laugh today it’s a win. But seriously I would sometimes catch myself out ( due to studio not saving parameters for each device ) I would have my EQ plugin for my headphones rig going into my speaker system DAC, not good. That’s of course one of the things I was hoping to see corrected.
The only DSP I have is EQ. Nothing else is on.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that has this problem! I hate when I forget to change my EQ. I wish it was easier to do in AS, too. I have to drill down in to AU settings to switch to a different preset.
If anything, it would be nice to set up two EQ AU configs and be able to just toggle them on or off in AS without having to go into their configs all the time.
