Antennapod: Audio-normalisation (& volume correction)

[keunes]

Taking the feature request by @Threore in the issue on enhancements for AP v 1.3:

"I do a lot of my podcast listening while riding to university on a bicycle, which means wind and traffic often make it hard to hear the podcasts. The obvious solution is to turn the volume up, but some podcasts are so much louder than others that going from one to the other becomes jarring. Some setting or automatic feature that normalises all the audio would be great."

Same for me; sometimes I'll just pull out my headphones on the bike when I can't hear what they're talking about on a new episode from the queue (no, I don't have buttons on my earplugs to skip episode or adjust volume :) )

I would like to add the option to set audio levels to the softer, middle or louder podcasts (I know this boils down to an additional volume setting front-end, but back-end it would be determining the volume edit between finishing normalisation and saving the file). Reason: normalisation may not be enough to pump up the volume high enough to suit biking (although maybe I'm wrong here).

[mfietz]

I really would not get my hopes up...
(a) Android does not have any built-in function or (AudioEffect) class that would achieve that
(b) We are only two active developers at the moment. I don't think we have the resources to implement an audio normalizer ourselves - and at least I lack the knowledge about audio to do so

[keunes]

Alright, thanks for the quick reply (& expectation management) :)

So, if anyone else reads this, and you're up for a challenge.... You can make this awesome app even more awesome ;)

[TomHennen]

Duplicate of #612.

[mfietz]

Any good examples? Playing around with a pretty simple normalizer, but most of my podcasts are pretty well balanced

[keunes]

Loud: Argos podcast: Dood bij aanhouding (mp3 file)

Soft: Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4: FriComedy: The News Quiz 15 Jan 16 (mp3 file)

I made a compilation of the two podcasts so you can easily hear their differences: sound level differences.mp3.zip

[bderiso]

Android now implements a compressor and even a multi-band compressor in the latest API.
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/audiofx/DynamicsProcessing

[Vrihub]

For implementation, you can also have a look at the vinyl music player:
https://github.com/AdrienPoupa/VinylMusicPlayer

In the settings the user can increase/decrease the tracks gain using the replaygain standard feature.

[antennapod-bot]

This issue has been mentioned on AntennaPod Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.antennapod.org/t/normalization/337/5