Replay gain on whole collection, or not?

[Rnee]

Hi guys

I have a collection of +24k files of which about 1200 are full albums, formats are flac, mp3 and m4a.

Apart from listening to full albums a lot, it also happens regularly that I play a mix based on genre or timeframe; naturally the result is having mixed sound levels.
I know about that replay gain exists and think I know what it does.
My questions
1) is it advisable to modify my whole collection to 1 level?
2) what are the disadvantages/reasons not to do this?
3) anyone who did this and went back?

TIA
R

[Stig Nygaard]

Apart from listening to full albums a lot, it also happens regularly that I play a mix based on genre or timeframe; naturally the result is having mixed sound levels.
I know about that replay gain exists and think I know what it does.
My questions
1) is it advisable to modify my whole collection to 1 level?
2) what are the disadvantages/reasons not to do this?
3) anyone who did this and went back?

Adding ReplayGain information to your audio files doesn't actually in itself change the soundlevel or converts the music in any way. It is just meta-data added with information about "the loudness" of the track. It's up to your playing device to read it and act upon it, or just ignore the information and play it like there wasn't any ReplayGain information.

So there's really no harm done adding ReplayGain information to your music, unless you are using a player which has a fixed behaviour on ReplayGain info, which doesn't fit your liking. But I think most players understanding ReplayGain info, also offers options on how to (and if to) use it.

If I was to add ReplayGain info to a big set of audiofiles (which have album name tagged), I would use something like foobar2000:
Right-click the root of you music library, and choose ReplayGain -> Scan as albums (by tag)
This would add ReplayGain to all tracks, including loudness of the albums the tracks belongs too.

Then I would open Settings page in LMS, and choose:
Player -> Audio -> Volume Adjustment/Replay Gain = "Smart Gain"

The info box to this LMS setting, explains it well what it does:

Some audio tracks contain volume adjustment, or "Replay Gain", information that can be used during playback to make sure that tracks and albums sound equally loud. The player can use this information if it is present. "Track gain" can be used to make sure that all tracks sound equally loud. "Album gain" can be used to make sure that all albums sound equally loud, but that volume differences between tracks within an album are preserved. "Smart" gain selection uses album gain if successive songs are from the same album or track gain for a mixed playlist.

[BJW]

I apply/write RG tags to everything.

I would advise applying the R128 ver of RG, its newer. I think foobar, MM, etc use it. Winamp doesn't.

I advise applying both track and album tags.

And yes, smart gain is a great feature to use.

[Fahzz]

[QUOTE=BJW;936869

I advise applying both track and album tags.
[/QUOTE]

How do you apply Track AND Album tags using Foobar?

Which tag would smart gain read in a multi album playlist?

Thanks!

[BJW]

Let me be more clear...

I don't use foobar, so I can't speak to it. But what I am saying, is I would find an app that uses the r128 standard, and have it analyze and write both track and album tags at the same time. Winamp does this, just not with r128, (yet).

Then use smartgain on playback, and it will pick which is best to use, (& do so most of the time correctly).

[kidstypike]

How do you apply Track AND Album tags using Foobar?

Which tag would smart gain read in a multi album playlist?

Thanks!

As Stig's post above - Foobar 2000 > ReplayGain -> Scan as albums (by tags). It takes ~10 seconds per album on my PC.

In a multi album playlist smart gain would read "Track gain" tags.

I couldn't do without it!

[Stig Nygaard]

How do you apply Track AND Album tags using Foobar?

I was assuming that "Scan as albums (by tag)" would scan and add both tags. But maybe I'm wrong? I have definitely used some software that adds both at once, but now I'm in doubt if that was foobar2000 or if I used something else. It's a long time ago I did that procedure.

My ripper software, dBpoweramp, definitely adds both.

So, maybe my foobar2000 instruction should be ignored. At least verify it works (shouldn't be so difficult to test, but I'm on my way to bed)

[garym]

I was assuming that "Scan as albums (by tag)" would scan and add both tags. But maybe I'm wrong? I have definitely used some software that adds both at once, but now I'm in doubt if that was foobar2000 or if I used something else. It's a long time ago I did that procedure.

My ripper software, dBpoweramp, definitely adds both.

So, maybe my foobar2000 instruction should be ignored. At least verify it works (shouldn't be so difficult to test, but I'm on my way to bed)

I use foobar2000 to add ReplayGain tags often. After installing the RG component in foobar2000, it is available. I see no settings for this in foobar, but I can confirm that it adds both track and album RG tags.

[Stig Nygaard]

I use foobar2000 to add ReplayGain tags often. After installing the RG component in foobar2000, it is available. I see no settings for this in foobar, but I can confirm that it adds both track and album RG tags.

Thanks garym - and kidstypike (who posted while I was very slowly typing my previous post).

Okay, so you MIGHT have to install the ReplayGain component first in foobar2000 before my instructions work (File->Preferences->Components), though I think it is default included?

My component is called ReplayGain Scanner 2.3 (foo_rgscan). And its About page says:

ReplayGain Scanner for foobar2000
Copyright (C) 2003-2018 Peter Pawlowski

libebur128
Copyright (C) 2011 Jan Kokemüller

I assume libebur128 means it is the R128 version BJW talks about.

[garym]

I assume libebur128 means it is the R128 version BJW talks about.

Yes, foobar2000 (and dbpoweramp) both use R128 for creating replaygain tags.

[emalvick]

I do think care needs to be taken as some software gives the option of actually adjusting the levels in the file?

I don't recommend that option, but watch out for it. It is a permanent change that it would seem rare that someone would want (at least in this day and age). I suspect it was more useful before RG tags became more widely supported. For instance, I use MediaMonkey, and it gives options for applying levels not just analyzing/tagging.

Anyway, I just mention it so that anyone new to the process applies a little caution.

Now in terms of processing 24k+ files, I probably wouldn't do it all at once. I would test it out on a few albums to start with and investigate how it works; understand what the process is. I know most of us that have done this know what it is, but it's worth understanding. I would then process on larger batches of files in a method you can keep track of. I had about 15k tracks at the time I did it, and my computer would hang up on trying to queue up more than 1,500 tracks. Of course that was 10+ years ago, but I think a lot of software get hung up with a large queue, and if you get a crash, it can be hard to figure out how far along your process got. It ended up being a little easier to just go through 10 to 50 albums at a time and know exactly where I was at.

[Fahzz]

As Stig's post above - Foobar 2000 > ReplayGain -> Scan as albums (by tags). It takes ~10 seconds per album on my PC.

In a multi album playlist smart gain would read "Track gain" tags.

I couldn't do without it!

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[ATTACH]27034[/ATTACH]

So just to confirm Foobar2000 will apply album gain and track gain by default if I follow the above procedure? I guess I have some rescanning to do!
BTW: I saw Ms Muldaur perform too many years ago.

[kidstypike]

So just to confirm Foobar2000 will apply album gain and track gain by default if I follow the above procedure? I guess I have some rescanning to do!
BTW: I saw Ms Muldaur perform too many years ago.

Yes it will.

[chill]

I was inspired by this thread to look into ways to add replaygain tags to my 'FLAC Image+CUE sheet collection'. Ideally I'd like to leave the FLAC image untouched and just write RG tags to the CUE sheet. I use a Macbook, and although there's a Foobar2000 port for Mac now, it doesn't seem to have this capability, unless I've missed something.

I've used XLD for all my ripping, and it's capable of writing RG tags as part of the ripping process, but somehow I managed to turn off the RG options at some point in the past, so my files don't include these tags. But it turns out that it's possible to generate a new CUE sheet from a ripped image and to include RG tags in that new sheet.

I did:

'File' -> 'Open', and selected the CUE sheet (not the FLAC file). This loads the list of tracks.
'File' -> 'Scan ReplayGain'. This produces a log file with the RG values included, but it doesn't update the original CUE file. At this point I thought that meant that RG tags couldn't be added (I thought I'd read that somewhere), but then I spotted..

'File' -> 'Save Cue Sheet As...'. This writes a new CUE sheet with the RG tags included. Like this:

.
.
.
REM REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN -6.03 dB
REM REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK 0.999969
FILE "Out Of The Blue.flac" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Turn To Stone"
    ISRC USSM17800576
    REM REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN -6.35 dB
    REM REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK 0.999023
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
.
.
.

...and LMS recognises both the album and track values.

Unfortunately I haven't yet found a way to automate this for a complete folder structure. When I load multiple CUE sheets into XLD it seems to want to start transcoding the audio files. But it's a start!

If anyone knows how to do this automatically for an entire music folder I'd be pleased to hear it.

[Fahzz]

Yes it will.

So big thanks to you and Stig. I always thought I had to choose between track gain and album gain, and it seemed that smart gain never worked properly. When I looked at my tags I had a mix of both, so now I'm rescanning everything in Foobar2000 as you recommended to get this sorted.