Volume Normalization and used cores

[JohanZ]

Hi Peter,
I'm always using Volume Normalisation. The normalisation proces cost special with high res material a lot of time. When loading Flac files i see during that proces the use of all processor cores. The "used core indicator" shows during the normalisation process the use of one core. Is that correct? Is it possible to use all cores for this normalisation process?
Best regard,
Johan

[PeterSt]

Hi Johan,

Very good remark / question !

The answer is Yes and No;

If it is about a FLAC album, the Yes springs from the fact that the conversion of those very same tracks to the very same WAV as usual when loading the album, can be done with more cores. Now this does not happen and all goes in a sequential fashion.
Notice that the conversion needs to take place because of the Normalisation which needs to "read" the normal music (WAV) file.

The No springs from the other fact that although it could be done, the reading of those files and doing all the math for it, is somewhat tedious for the programming, say because all are needed together for the average of the whole album and which requires "synchronisation" of the threads (one for each core) so in the end all is available. And notice that we can't say that cores are available for all the tracks on the album, so this is a process of several iterations and synchronisation at the end. And well, the track loading does the same (the synchronisation point is when the GUI finishes and music starts to play) but this is a way difficult "loop" and nothing which will be made in a day.

Also notice that the album can be HDCD encoded and that this too has to be decoded first. So :
FLAC -> WAV -> HDCD -> WAV.

Conclusion and answer :
I did this part the easy way also knowing that the Normalisation only will happen once per album (ever). So it is not such a big deal (for me at least).
Lastlty, in the Library Area you can rightclick selected albums and choose for Volume Normalisation in there (somewhere). So you can do all during a night etc. Problem with that can be that somewhere along the lines an album fails for this and then the task won't finish and you need to restart the track from where it failed until it fails for the next one. This is no different from once in a while the Normalisation failing with regular playback - I suppose you notice that too.
Regarding this the upcoming version is more robust (I think) so it could be an idea to wait for that (soon up now).

Sorry for the long story ...
Peter