Very low volume Jellyfin Media Player

[Xyn]

Hey all, first I want to give a bit of background to explain why this is suddenly an issue after using Jellyfin for 2-3 years probably. A few months ago, the Pioneer bookshelf speakers I was using started popping, so I upgraded my speakers. But I went from a speaker amp and passive speakers to two powered studio monitors. Thus, I went from a speaker amp with a single volume knob within easy reach to two monitors, each with a volume knob on the back that would be extremely inconvenient and annoying to have to constantly adjust.

The last couple weeks are the first time I've watched anything on my computer using Jellyfin Media Player since the speaker upgrade, and the volume is VERY quiet when Direct Playing. If I play the video directly over the network share using VLC at 100% volume, it is MUCH louder than Jellyfin Media Player at 100% volume. That's why I'm assuming this is probably some client setting related, but I'm not really seeing anything that looks like it might be applicable.

I'm not even sure I'm looking in the right place for the client settings, but I went to the hamburger menu > Settings > Playback under the User category. I tried setting Maximum Allowed Audio Channels from Auto to 2, and I tried setting Audio Normalization from Track Gain (which I like to have to apply ReplainGain metadata for music) to Off. Neither change made any difference.

The server itself doesn't seem to have any audio playback settings at all as far as Direct Play is concerned, so I don't think the server is the issue here.

I'd appreciate any help with this. It may be that this was always an issue, but when I had a volume knob within arm's reach it wasn't a big deal to adjust the volume up for playing a movie on Jellyfin then back down for playing YouTube or video games or whatever else. But now I would have to stand up, reach behind each of two speakers, and adjust the volume up before playing a movie, then repeat that process to adjust it back down when doing anything else, and that's simply not a tenable solution anymore.

I know the server has a volume boost or something under transcoding settings, so if worse comes to worse I might have to resort to just forcing it to transcode the audio, or just stop watching media on my PC and watching it on my TV, since it wouldn't be a big deal to adjust the volume there.

Tgabjs

[DenSilent]

I think this is related
https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-stereo-down...dia-player

For some reason Jellyfin server when JMP is "direct playing" doesn't touch audio stream in any way regardless of client settings. But it should. If client uses stereo output server should switch to downmix audio mode (=transcode audio, there is no way around it) to stereo because the JMP itself doesn't do it resulting in VERY quiet (and most importantly very uneven) output and the main problem is the Center audio channel with all the dialogs.

You can force JMP to process audio by itself, you can check my thread and play around with loudnorm or dynaudnorm parameters. Can not add much to it, I dive in this topic just today.

>>I might have to resort to just forcing it to transcode the audio,
AFAIK there is no way to do it. It definitely fixes the problem because in transcoding mode server uses audio boost and all other settings, i.e. proper downmix. But you just can not force it to do it You can force server to transcode everything (including video) but this is not a solution.

[Xyn]

I think this is related
https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-stereo-down...dia-player

For some reason Jellyfin server when JMP is "direct playing" doesn't touch audio stream in any way regardless of client settings. But it should. If client uses stereo output server should switch to downmix audio mode (=transcode audio, there is no way around it) to stereo because the JMP itself doesn't do it resulting in VERY quiet (and most importantly very uneven) output and the main problem is the Center audio channel with all the dialogs.

You can force JMP to process audio by itself, you can check my thread and play around with loudnorm or dynaudnorm parameters. Can not add much to it, I dive in this topic just today.

>>I might have to resort to just forcing it to transcode the audio,
AFAIK there is no way to do it. It definitely fixes the problem because in transcoding mode server uses audio boost and all other settings, i.e. proper downmix. But you just can not force it to do it You can force server to transcode everything (including video) but this is not a solution.

Using the hack you mentioned there was a vast improvement, so that's now in a usable state for me. Thanks!