Global Max Volume Level AND Auto Volume Normalization

Feature request
1

App version: 3.9.0 (Google Play)

The (connected) problems:

1st: I’m subscribed to hundreds of podcasts (like probably most people), and sometimes the volume of individual podcasts in general (not only of individual episodes) is either constantly too high or too low (compared to other podcasts). Now, when I raise or lower the volume of individual podcasts, I start to lose oversight, and when the general volume of podcasts change again (which sometimes happens), the whole volume experience gets mixed up. At the same time it’s hard to get back to normal levels, without having an overview of podcasts with changed volume settings.

2nd: The maximal volume of my phone’s loudspeakers is quite okay under normal conditions, but when it gets louder (for instance while cooking), it’s too low. The volume increase option of AntennaPod allows to further increase the loudspeaker’s volume significantly, but currently it can only be set at an individual podcast level - and logically it’s too much work to change the volume settings for hundreds of podcasts (and each new podcast).

Suggested (connected) solution:

1st: Introduce a global volume normalization option, automatically avoiding volume differences between podcasts and / or episodes. This way users wouldn’t have to change the volume manually, when a new episode starts and it’s volume is either too low or too high (happens quite often in my case!). I know from other apps and music players that this is possible, I think for many years, maybe even decades already. This would even allow removing individual volume settings from the app (which, as explained above, are too complicated and in the end confusing anyway).

2nd: Introduce a global volume booster, so that the maximum capacity of a phone’s loudspeaker can be used. Or use the maximum capacity by default (lowering the phone’s volume is still possible, anyway).

Thanks for your consideration!

I’m aware that the volume topic has been raised before several times, but the problems and suggested solutions were quite different. Also, I wasn’t happy with the justifications, why everything regarding volume is already great and should stay as it is.

Looking forward to hearing other opinions!

2

I came here looking to see if this feature could be added too, and saw that it’s been requested before but that devs understandably didn’t feel like they had time or know-how to tackle it. I’m an audio-engineer with a pretty deep understanding of compression/limiting/normalization, and I’d love to help in any way I can. I have limited development experience, but I saw someone mentioned Android has a few compression APIs now, so if the devs want to work on something like this, I would be up for lending my audio processing knowledge to help design an implementation for a normalization setting.

2 Likes
3

Auto normalisation would be amazing, although a lot of the quiet podcasts I listen to still have painfully loud ad reads, so the option to normalise peaks and based on average loudness would be cool, but complicated I suppose.

1 Like
4

It wouldn’t be that bad, just a series of compressors and a limiter. Trying to do normalization pre-playback with simple volume changes would be more complicated and require a bunch of preprocessing to every episode, which could take minutes depending on the length of the episode, so that wouldn’t be ideal. But doing it dynamically with compression/limiting wouldn’t be too bad, although it would change the actual sound of the audio, which some people wouldn’t like. But with some podcasts being published with no dynamics processing at all and like a whopping 24db of dynamic range, that could be a great thing for listenability for the average person.

1 Like