Audio Analysis

What is Audio Analysis and how is it used?

During audio analysis, each file in your library is analyzed in order to extract information about their audio content. Data extracted during audio analysis is used for several purposes:

Volume Leveling

Volume Leveling automatically adjusts the playback volume in order to maintain a consistent level regardless of the source material. Audio analysis extracts information about the loudness and peak values in the content.

Crossfade

When fading between tracks, Roon skips over silence at the beginnings and ends of the tracks, in order to produce a more satisfying overlap. Audio Analysis measures these regions of silence in advance.

Waveform displays

Audio analysis captures the waveform data used to drive graphics like this:

Dynamic Range

Audio Analysis captures information about the dynamic range of the content in your library:

Detecting corrupt media

Because audio analysis touches every file in your library, it's in a great position to detect files with problems.

Audio Analysis Settings

Audio Analysis takes place automatically. The entire library is analyzed in the background, and when you start playback of an un-analyzed track, audio analysis is performed on demand. By default, Roon devotes roughly 30% of one CPU core to the task of background analysis, and uses 100% of one CPU core for on-demand analysis. While these defaults make the performance impact of audio analysis less visible, it also means that it can take a very long time. Analysis performance is almost totally dependent on the performance of the hardware that's serving as your Roon Server. In Settings->Library, there are two settings that allow you to control the tradeoff between "how long it takes" and "how hard it works the computer". These are located in Settings -> Library:

If you have just imported a large amount of content or are starting from scratch and you are eager to have your library analyzed as quickly as possible, you might consider increasing the Background Audio analysis speed to something faster and letting it work hard overnight, like this:

Finally, if you have audio devices connected directly to the machine that's performing audio analysis, it's worth considering the recommendations in Sound Quality in One Computer when choosing your analysis settings during listening sessions.

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