Volume Leveler (Atmos)

Kodi
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Atmos music has been reported to be 10-20db lower than non-Atmos tracks. This causes havoc when switching between different tracks. Some Atmos music can’t even play at good volume with my receiver maxxed out. I’ve never experienced that in my lifetime. Its nuts.

I understand Apple has something called Soundcheck which supposedly helps (a little) boosting Atmos.

I don’t know if a fix makes more sense at the Kodi or Coreelec level, so I’m asking in both places. I’ve no response yet on the Kodi side.

Is there anything that can be done to add some kind of volume leveling in Coreelec?

I’ve already had a couple incidents where I thought I was going to damage my speakers (and/or ears). Its strange how bad Dolby’s implementation is.

1 Like
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Yes that is how it is implemented at dolby side. Very bad.
Last time I subscribe Tidal for Atmos track, used dolby certified android TV player, and the volume is very low for atmos tracks. Its very dangerous to the speaker if suddenly player streams non atmos source :hushed:

btw may I know the method you played atmos music thru coreelec? you installed any streaming app or local file??

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Local files. Kodi will pass thru eac3 atmos from both mka and m4a files.

Atmos Blurays are a good ripping source.

There are also some direct DLs you can buy, but catalogues are a bit limited right now. Here’s a page with some links to stores selling Atmos music.

Regardless, all Atmos tracks are low volume and have to be played carefully to avoid damaging equipment when switching to non-Atmos sources.

I often have to change my volume from ‘60’ to ‘30’ after playing an Atmos track. My receiver max volume is ‘75’.

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I don’t think there is a leveler. It’s all a license item so you can’t decode, change the volume, encoder again.
Only I can think of will be such hardware have licensed chips to be able to perform what you want.

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That’s disappointing, but good to know.

I wonder how AppleTV Soundcheck works. Maybe it applies a negative gain to non-Atnos tracks and calls it a day.

That wouldn’t work well since I already fight Atmos music not going loud enough at max volume.

Its a shame that Dolby was so incompetent. Its a good example of over-engineering something to the point of uselessness.

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I have ripped my Atmos tracks to .mka. Kodi uses passthrough, the Atmos logo lights up on my receiver and I notice no difference in audio volume.

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Are you saying that the blu ray has the same volume as the ripped track? That is obvious. It is the same Dolby EAC3 track being decoded in the end.

The volume issue is when switching between the vast majority of FLAC music and an Atmos track. The volume change is unacceptable and…not exaggerating…dangerous.

Are you claiming you set your receiver volume…play an Atmos track in Kodi…then play an equivalent stereo (or multichannel ) flac file through Kodi…and the volume is…SIMILAR?

If so, I am truly in awe and the world wants to know your secret!

What tracks did you rip? Did you use MKVTOOLNIX to rip from ISO, or some other method/app?

If an app exists that can adjust the gain for an Atmos track, I definitely need it. It is annoying to have to make 30 steps of volume change when switching music formats.

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I’m using a process that involves DVDFab to rip the tracks and convert them. My files are tagged and replaygained in foobar2000. I just had a look at the replaygain values and there is nothing that would suggest a huge difference in volume as you seem to experience. Then again, I haven’t tried playing the original Bluray or an .iso of it in Kodi, maybe that’s where the problem lies.

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As I know AppleTV converts all bitstream to multi channel PCM at the output side. So technically during this conversion it level up the gain of the stream.
Probably this is why you see Atmos music playback in AppleTV does not have volume level issue.

just my 2 cents :smiley:

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