Audiophiles, we have a problem that’s been annoying us for quite some time now that we’ve learned to live with. But hoping there might be a relatively inexpensive solution we haven’t thought of.

Daily we listen to a few hours of Pandora streamed music on a Samsung Smart TV and a moderately high-end audio system consisting of a 90W receiver, a pair of Pioneer towers and a 12” powered subwoofer. The woofer supplies all the low end we could ever want and the Pioneers give us crisp and clear mid and high range.

The problem is Pandora does not send volume -leveled packets causing us to manually adjust the volume on the receiver remote. Things may be great for 4 or 8 songs and then a track with heavy bass synth will come along and require several down-clicks on the remote to reach a pleasing level. Then during the next song or 2 several up-clicks are needed. This happens even if the sub-woofer is disabled.

I know Pandora is the issue because we have no such problem with broadcast TV or DVDs. I believe Pandora streams using the AAC+ standard with no volume-leveling, thereby subjecting the listener to the original recording levels, whatever they might have been. I understand that radio and TV broadcasters will compress their entire broadcast resulting in a dB equalization that requires little, if any, listener adjustments.

Here are a few “solutions” we cannot do
1. Buy soundbars. Been there, done that and returned them the very next day for full refund. The sound quality of these things is little better than a cell phone speaker.
2. Buy a new $1500+ receiver with built-in volume-leveling. I can’t justify a new receiver until the existing one reaches end-of-life.
3. Use a different streaming service. We have too much invested in customizing our Pandora stations plus we enjoy the price . . . free.

Has anyone solved a similar problem?

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BiaB 2026 Windows
For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.