Volume Level Discrepancy

[ThornyJohn]

I noticed that the music playback volume in MusicBee is much more subdued than in other players. Near as I know, I do not have any kind of graphic equalizer turned on or any other plugin that might affect volume. As an example (though this is not the only combo I tested), I played a track that I ripped from a CD to FLAC using MusicBee's built-in ripper. If I play that track using VideoLan VLC Player at 100% volume it sounds (subjectively) like 100% volume. If I play that exact same track using MusicBee at 100% volume, it sounds roughly like VLC's volume set to 70%.

I also tried it with an MP3 version of the same file, converted by MusicBee's internal converter: same results. Different files, different albums; same results. Windows Media Player, Miro, MediaMonkey...all play at VLC's volume. Only MusicBee is subdued.

I tried changing (unticking) the player options to "dynamically normalize volume of streams" and "normalize volume of tracks with replay gain tags" but neither of those did anything to change the playback volume level.

I should point out that as far as I recall, I did very little to no tweaking of the guts and deep options of MusicBee. I am a pretty basic end-user when it comes to this. I preset MusicBee to rip my CD collection to FLAC and always use the same settings since v1.4, I then use MusicBee's internal converter to create MP3 versions of the same files for playback in my car, and lastly, I listen to my FLACs using MusicBee. That's it. I'm not one to go messing around with equalizers, volume analyzers and what-not, but I will if the answer lies somewhere deep in that mess. 

[redwing]

VLC's default max volume is 125% (3 dB louder), and that can be increased up to 200% with settings. Don't know about other players, though.

[ThornyJohn]

I got a higher volume by turning on the equalizer (left the setting at "Manual") and raising the pre-amp volume by +4.5dB. Is this what you meant by changing the settings to make the volume go up to 200%? I did not see any other option to simply raise the max volume from 125% up to 200%.

[ThornyJohn]

SOLVED!

Turns out that MusicBee had a setting under Controls set to "Smart Gain." Changing this to "Replay Gain Off" gave me back the volume I was missing. Now MusicBee's volume matches everything else on my system at a certain volume! 

Thanks for your reply, redwing; it got me to thinking about where else there might also be settings to control the player, besides the Preferences window.

[redwing]

Is this what you meant by changing the settings to make the volume go up to 200%?

I was talking about VLC, not MB: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=115164&p=390412#p390412
Anyway, glad you got it sorted out.