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replay gain question

post #1 of 19
6/9/07 at 4:31pm
Thread Starter 
hey..i know that replay gain will make almost all of the sound on the same level of volume but when i replaygained my mp3's the sound became too low..are there any way i can replaygained and make the sound louder?

i tried searching but didnt get an answer

Thanks in advance
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post #2 of 19
6/9/07 at 4:37pm
That's the whole idea. You cannot make quieter tracks as loud as today's compressed crap without destroying the sound. That's why it's easier & better to reduce the volume of loud songs than to make quiet songs louder.

Explanation at their website:
http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/faq_quiet.html
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post #3 of 19
6/9/07 at 4:49pm
Does applying ReplayGain to older tracks reduce their quality?
If a CD gets a +dB change do I just not apply ReplayGain?
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post #4 of 19
6/9/07 at 4:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hijodeltiger View Post
Does applying ReplayGain to older tracks reduce their quality?
If a CD gets a +dB change do I just not apply ReplayGain?
Replay Gain does not change the file at all.

Replay Gain simply attaches instructions (as meta data) to he player on how to adjust the volume of playback.

Replay Gain data can easily be removed if you desire, and you're back to a pristine file.
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post #5 of 19
6/9/07 at 4:57pm
Thread Starter 
and when i scan them, which one do i choose? albumgain, replaygain, single album? the more i read the more im confused
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post #6 of 19
6/9/07 at 5:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hijodeltiger View Post
Does applying ReplayGain to older tracks reduce their quality?
If a CD gets a +dB change do I just not apply ReplayGain?
You could depending on whether the mp3 will get above 0 dB. If it's clipping you should remove the replaygain. This doesn't happen so often though.
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post #7 of 19
6/9/07 at 5:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kamal007 View Post
and when i scan them, which one do i choose? albumgain, replaygain, single album? the more i read the more im confused
Album gain is preferred when scanning albums, track gain when scanning a bunch of unrelated tracks.

In players that are able to use it (Squeezebox for example) there is a feature called "Smart Gain" that will be aware if you are playing an entire album or playing a random mix.

If you are playing an entire album it will preserve the relative dynamics of the album, that is, a song that was designed to be louder that other songs on the album will still be louder.

If you are playing a random mix the player will keep the average volume of each track the same.

I know that the Squeezebox can use Smart Gain, but I'm not sure which other players can. In fact, it may be exclusively a SlimDevices thing for all I know.
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post #8 of 19
6/9/07 at 5:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnOYiN View Post
You could depending on whether the mp3 will get above 0 dB. If it's clipping you should remove the replaygain. This doesn't happen so often though.
I've never seen that happen, I wasn't aware that Replay Gain would drive a track into clipping. It's never happened to me at any rate and I have 15,076 tracks with Replay Gain added.
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post #9 of 19
6/9/07 at 5:59pm
Isn't EnOYiN referring to a song that clips before applying RG? If so, I don't know what could be the problem as to using RG, however I'm posting questions here.
So, as I understand it, ReplayGain only increases or decreases the "volume" in the song so no dynamic range is actually lost. Am I getting this correctly?
One last question is why do mp3s go over 1.000 track level especially with newer CDs?, is it some kind of mp3 artifact?
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post #10 of 19
6/9/07 at 6:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hijodeltiger View Post
So, as I understand it, ReplayGain only increases or decreases the "volume" in the song so no dynamic range is actually lost. Am I getting this correctly?
Yes, that is correct.

Quote:
One last question is why do mp3s go over 1.000 track level especially with newer CDs?, is it some kind of mp3 artifact?

No digital file can go over 0 db, 0 db is a hard limit. But remember, these are merely instructions to the player to adjust volume. A positive db would simply telling the player to increase volume for this track, it is not a measure of the volume level of that track.
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post #11 of 19
6/9/07 at 7:31pm
This is how I see it and I am probably wrong at many levels.

Replay gain is awesome. I see it solving 2 problems:
1) Reduce the volume to decrease clipping with the actual audio system and maybe push back the volume to better linear operational ranges of the audio system. Any clips in the original source will still be there.
2) Even out the loudness between tracks and albums, especially in this day and age where CDs are ripped and stored in one storage medium and played back in any order. This means that replaygain can ultimately make music sound louder too, causing it to clip more often than the original source. One should raise the db gain to ridiculous level and listen to it. This is a good example what a recording with significantly poor dynamics will do to your system.

Replaygain under normal operations modify the tags only making it easy to reverse or ignore. Replaygain that irreversibly modifies the entire file is not very versatile, but sometimes necessary in dealing with formats with no or inflexible headers such as the wav format.

Replaygain only adds additional information such as a relative offset. It does not alter the digital information to make it sound better besides telling the player to alter the relative gain. The change in gain may enhance the quality down the audio pipe.
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post #12 of 19
6/9/07 at 7:42pm
here's an example of what i'm talking about:

http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?i...laygainqd0.jpg
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post #13 of 19
6/9/07 at 8:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hijodeltiger View Post
here's an example of what i'm talking about:

http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?i...laygainqd0.jpg
Hmmmm....

I have to admit, I'm stumped. I haven't seen that before. Does the track sound OK?
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post #14 of 19
6/10/07 at 2:18am
Yes, it sounds OK. It's just one of those loud songs.
I'm kind of amazed you hadn't seen that happen before. It's actually quite common.
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post #15 of 19
6/10/07 at 2:40am
I have seen that quite often. I never though much of it because I thought 1.0 was same base reference level, not necessarily above going the 0db hard limit.
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