u/thebirdman9999, Huh.... Normalise doesn't impact dynamic range if it's set to Normal or Quiet... Where did you here such lies... Normalisation doesn't compress the file it just lowers the volume to a set standard LUFS across board so worse and more compressed songs don't sound jarring playing right after good dynamic range having songs that have acceptable LUFS.

Please don't go around saying Normalisation reduces dynamic range.

Lemme link this wall of text:

Spotify goes into detail on this page - (https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-loudness#can-users-adjust-the-levels-of-my-music) about what each setting does.

> When we receive your audio file, we transcode it to delivery formats Ogg/Vorbis and AAC. At the same time, we calculate the loudness level and store that information as metadata in the transcoded formats of your track.

> Playback levels are not adjusted when transcoding tracks. Tracks are delivered to the app with their original volume levels, and positive/negative gain compensation is only applied to a track while it’s playing. This gives users the option to adjust the Loudness Normalization if they want to.

> Negative gain is applied to louder masters so the loudness level is at ca - 14 dB LUFS. This process only decreases the volume in comparison to the master; no additional distortion occurs.

> Positive gain is applied to softer masters so that the loudness level is at ca - 14 dB LUFS. A limiter is also applied, set to engage at -1 dB (sample values), with a 5 ms attack time and a 100 ms decay time. This will prevent any distortion or clipping from soft but dynamic tracks.

> The gain is constant throughout the whole track, and calculated to match our desired output loudness level.

> Premium users can choose between the following volume normalization levels in their app settings:

> Loud - equalling ca -11 dB LUFS (+6 dB gain multiplied to ReplayGain)

> Normal (default) - equalling ca -14 dB LUFS (+3 dB gain multiplied to ReplayGain)

> Quiet - equalling ca - 23 dB LUFS (-5 dB gain multiplied to ReplayGain) This is to compensate for where playback isn’t loud enough (e.g. in a noisy environment) or dynamic enough (e.g. in a quiet environment).

Emphasis mine -- basically Spotify's system is just normalization in most cases, and only behaves as a compressor to prevent clipping. I suspect if you were to set it to the "Loud" setting you'd hit that behavior on some tracks but in general their approach seems like it'd be avoided. Personally I'd recommend users enable audio normalization and use the "Quiet" or "Normal" settings.

To directly answer your questions:

> Does Spotify's volume normalization use compression?

Yes, only if clipping is detected, and only for the duration that clipping occurs. Since tracks are lowered in volume when this feature is turned on this should be exceedingly rare that this happens.

> Why does Spotify (and the internet) say that dynamic range is most preserved on quiet normalization?

Since the compression only kicks in if clipping (or near clipping) is detected it's fairly unlikely to kick in on the normal setting. It's basically guaranteed to not happen on the quiet setting. It might kick in on some cases on the loud setting, but from their documentation it sounds like this might only happen if a track was super quiet to begin with.

So it only compresses if said track was mastered terribly with extremely loud LUFS... So a well mastered song is never hit with a dynamic range penalty... This is good as it has helped us move away from the era people used to brickwall their audio so their CDs sounded louder than other acts, thinking that will lead to more plays of their CDs. Nowadays if you fuck up your own mix, you're gonna get a volume level the same as songs mastered to tons of dynamic range and your track will end up sounding trash....

TLDR: Sorry for the long winding text but no Spotify doesn't touch the Dynamic range of a song. They just lower the volume so all songs on the platform have the same volume.