When I listen to cable TV or Netflix, sound at 100 percent is not quite loud enough. Listening to YouTube at 25 is just perfect. Sound bar is connected through optical cable. What am I not getting right? Thanks in advance.
This may not be your fault. There is huge variation in the sound level of streams.
Things are in a state of flux at the moment. Broadcast levels for radio have been specked for years. The sound level is governed by EBU 128, and the US AES spec. is the same.
Now the EU have controlled streaming with EBU 128-r. AES have followed with AES 77. This is unfortunate as they are not the same. Streaming is world wide and now US and EU have different LUF levels.
The end result is that streaming audio levels are going to go down, and are significantly lower than the broadcast level for radio stations.
There are actually sound reasons for this, as I have discovered from my researches. All this is within recent months, but there is going to be enforcement, which is beginning.
The big problem is what you are experiencing, as some equipment can not cope with the lowered audio level as apparently you are discovering.
This is a complex issue, and I am starting to put together a post about this, as it will, and actually is, impacting us all.
So up to now, I have normalized Wav. files I work on for others to EBU 128. Now if they are for streaming I will have to normalize the files to EBU 128r for Europe and AES 77 for the US.
