About This Application Note

The PlayLevel Reusable Subsystem Application Note contains a brief description and tuning instructions for DSP Concepts’ PlayLevel volume management Reusable Subsystem.

PlayLevel – Volume Management Reusable Subsystem

PlayLevel is DSP Concepts’ proprietary volume management algorithm. It is available as a Reusable Subsystem in AWE Designer.

PlayLevel detects the signal level of streaming audio content and aligns their output loudness level. PlayLevel works for mono or stereo audio streams and with all sampling frequencies and block sizes.

Example

Figure 1 shows an example layout demonstrating the PlayLevel Reusable Subsystem. This example layout is designed to run in Native Mode with a file input; audio signals must be assigned to appropriate channels for running the layout on a target device.

Tuning

The PlayLevel Reusable Subsystem includes an inspector which allows users to adjust the output signal level and toggle Night Mode on and off. Figure 3 show the inspector panel of the PlayLevel Reusable Subsystem.

Target Level

The Target Level is the output digital signal level (0 dBFS is the full-scale signal level). After PlayLevel aligns the signal level of audio content with different volume levels, PlayLevel applies Automatic Gain Control to change the level-aligned signal to the Target Level.

Night Mode Switch

The Night Mode switch moderately attenuates low frequency content and makes the output sound slightly quieter.