Maybe I'm not doing a good job of explaining this? Say your volume level spans 1 to 10. This device will not move the level between 1 and 9, it will trim the part between 5 and 7. Think of it as turning it *down* when the bar isn't noisy.I think you are missing a human response issue here. People will try to talk above the music level and when the music stops for a moment the talking volume will not instantly change. If you sample in the short dead time between songs you will get an artificially high level. Remember, the music level drives how loud people talk. This factor make for an unstable control loop.