Automatic volume leveling during audio playback

Anonymous
2009-11-05T13:16:13+00:00

This is really annoying:

Quiet sound is amplified to sound at a reasonable level. Then when a loud part of the song comes on the level automatically drops making the quiet parts sound annoyingly loud & the loud part annoyingly quiet... Sorry that's the best way I can describe this... again:

Only happens when its had a few seconds on silent (eg. pause) - at that point the system starts to "think" for itself creeping the base volumes up. Then when the song begins again you are treated to loudness that is quickly quietened when the system realises there is a higher level of sound coming through...

This is very frustrating because I use my computer to record & as such need to have the audio playing at its proper level - not the level the computer thinks it should be playing at...

I have combed through the settings looking for an "auto off" option, and have spent a long time searching for an answer online. 

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2009-11-05T22:23:05+00:00

Hi pablo647,

Welcome to Microsoft Windows 7 Answers Forum!

We would like to get a little more information from you to help troubleshoot your issue.

Are you using any Sound Card on the machine?

You can try playing the same song to a differnet Headphone or the Speakers.

I suspect it could be a problem with the sound card drivers.

You can update the drivers for the sound devices and try after that.

  1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.
  2. Click System and Maintenance, click System, and then click Device Manager.

Note If Control Panel is in Classic View, double-click System, and then click Device Manager.

  1. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Allow.
  2. In Device Manager, expland "Sound Video and Game controllers", right-click the "Sound Video and Game controllers" and go to properties.
  3. Browse to the Update tab and then click on update driver.

You may also check on the Sound card manufacturers web site and verify if they have any updated drivers for Windows 7 and try to install it.   

Hope it helps.  

Thanks and Regards:

Shekhar S - Microsoft Support.

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-08-24T06:29:40+00:00

    Agree with pablo647,

    I assure you that this is NOT AN AUDIO/SOUNDCARD DRIVER ISSUE at all. This is a feature from Win 7 itself . I could say that i'm an advanced user and know which one is driver issue and which isn't.

    Just wanna share, i've discovered a way to de-activated this 'normalizer'(actually not disable it,but only prevent it from 'normalizing' the track which being played)

    1.Right click Volume on notification area and select Open Volume Mixer (beside clock)

    2.Set Master volume bar to 90-95%.

    1. Lower your application volume bar to 10-15% (lower than 50% is a must)
    2. Now the sound from track should be normal and will not normalized by Win7.

    I am using WinAmp & WMP to play videos and audio file and get verry annoyed by this 'volume normalizer' things. Maybe if you just play song from your laptop speaker,this things isn't really big problem, but i am an audiophile whose have 5.1 channel audio system. So i still use XP SP3 to play music n videos, and only use Win7 to surf and some video rendering.

    PS:XP have DirectX 9.0 which support hardware mixing (you can view it in WinAmp Preferences>Output>select DirectSound>configure). But Win7 doesn't support it. Very dissapointing.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-08-20T16:27:29+00:00

    A few weeks a go I noticed something. For me this problem only exists when using Windows Media Player. It's not a Windows 7 problem!

    I decided to try other players, downloaded Real Player SP and everything works perfect! no more auto-volume leveling and such.

    The problem IS Windows Media Player :D

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-08-19T06:59:50+00:00

    I've spent the last few hours looking for an answer to this same problem when I found this thread. I've been using Win7 for only a few days (lots of hair-pulling trying to figure out how to things I knew how to do in XP) and this audio "softening" was getting really annoying. I first noticed it on system sounds as they would fade in. At first I thought they weren't even turned on because some of them were shorter than the volume ramp-up time of this volume thing so I barely heard anything.

    I had already turned off the Loudness Equalisation and selected the "do nothing" option for phone calls but nothing had worked. But then I tried turning off theEQUALIZER in Sound>Playback>Speakers>Properties>Enhancements and voila!!problem solved .

    For reference, I'm using the on-board Realtek sound on a Gigabyte GA-H55USB3. I use JetAudio for mp3/wma files and it has it's own equalizer so I don't need the system EQ. I gave up on WMP a long time ago so I don't know, but I would assume that WMP uses the system EQ so you may need to switch to another player to be able to use an EQ.

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-08-08T11:05:28+00:00

    Hi Guys,

    I originally started this thread, Reporting back again.

    All I can say for people who continue to have these difficulties is - go down the line, after the output from the computer/laptop or explore added on software that may be causing the fluctuations.

    I have recently reverted back to Windows 7 after experiencing some compatibility issues while attempting to install Cubase 5 onto the XP SP3 machine. Windows 7 was very kind to the Steinberg software.

    I assure you, (from my experience) there is no automatic volume leveling system programmed into Windows 7. iTunes however has a normalise option which can adversely affect the dynamic range of sounds.

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