If people listen to Spotify on a PC via the Spotify software you have the option to enable or disable 'volume normalization'

However, if you use (say Triode's) Spotify Plugin with Squeezebox there is no similar option and volume normalization is ALWAYS enabled. The official Squeezebox plug almost certainly behaves similarly as both depend on 'libspotify' - a package provided by Spotify to enable developers to create applications.

This is a major drawback.

Triode has made a request on Spotify's 'Get Satisfaction' website, that Spotify include the option to disable normalization in 'libspotify'.

If you agree with his request please lend your support on the 'Get Satisfaction' site:

Triode's request and subsequent comments

I thought it might be worth mentioning this here as I see that some contributors use Spotify. (I do hope I'm not infringing any rules.)

By the way, as an example, these are visual examples of the Spotify output of a recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra with normalization disabled (via the Spotify PC interface) and enabled (via Squeezebox/Triode's plugin). The tracks are indicated by the vertical lines. (I captured the outputs and loaded the wave files into Soundforge in order to demonstrate the effect.)

Normalization disabled

Normalization enabled

In particular note the effect on the second track and also note that gain is even applied to tracks which originally peaked at 0dB, pushing the peaks into limiting to avoid clipping.

[Edit: I originally posted the link to the original CD rather than the Spotify output without normalization. They are very similar, though the Spotify version has limiting applied at about -0.5dB.)

Last edited by JohnGB; 2011-03-14 17:47.
G92-DAB, G55, speakers: PMC FB1+, Squeezebox Touch, Duet, Sennheiser HD600, HP Proliant Microserver running Ubuntu