Low volume on recent iTunes purchased music

[izzian]

Hi all

Longtime user of MediaMonkey on Windows and Android, first time poster.

Lately I've noticed that m4a/aac music purchased in iTunes and played back in MediaMonkey 5 plays at considerably lower volume than it should. Interestingly if I skip around the track it'll go back to a "normal" volume for a split second before going quiet.

This only happens with iTunes music that has been added to the iTunes store in the last 9 months or so. All older iTunes AAC music continues to play fine.

This same issue also happened on my phone in the Android appup until an Android version update fixed the issue - I think it went away with Android 12. I have an older Android tablet that is still on Android 11 that still has the exact same issue, and I now convert m4a files to mp3 when syncing to that device. To me this suggests Apple have been doing something funny with their codecs lately that has been fixed on some other platforms, but is still happening in the MediaMonkey Windows player.

I did a bit of Goggling and couldn't find anything specific to MediaMonkey but came across a post regarding Musicbee (which I don't use) that describes the exact same issue: https:// getmusicbee. com/forum/index.php?topic=23454.0

Is there any fix for this, or any plans for MediaMonkey to update their AAC codecs in the near future?

Thanks

[Lowlander]

Is Play > Level Playback Volume enabled or disabled in MM, does toggling this improve this?

[izzian]

Is Play > Level Playback Volume enabled or disabled in MM, does toggling this improve this?

It wasn't enabled but have tried both. Same behaviour regardless.

[Lowlander]

If you disable level playback volume and the files are leveled at like 95dB, then they should sound louder than with the option enabled. What volume did you level the files at on Sync?