Help With ReplayGain and FLAC

Greetings all,

In the course of putting together a bunch of tracks for my portable player, I learned about Replaygain and its uses. I wound up using MP3Gain to alter the playback volume so as not to blow my ears off during workouts.

My music collection is ripped to my computer, mostly as FLAC files. I use FLAC Frontend to convert them, and never used the ReplayGain options in the past. For most uses, like listening to individual albums, this really doesn't matter to me - I can adjust the volume on my preamp easily enough.

But I have a large, single folder with some 2,000+ tracks which I basically use as a jukebox (the contents change pretty regularly, so I never bothered with a playlist). Since they come from a wide variety of albums, the individual playback levels are similarly all over the map. I'd like to be able to add Track Gain to these files.

1. Can FLAC Frontend do this to existing FLAC files?

2. If not, is there a simple GUI that can?

3. Is there any sound quality loss or degradation in using ReplayGain?

4. Front end specific: On the encoding options there is a tick box for ReplayGain. When you tick it, another box becomes available that says "Treat input files as one album". I did not use that option in my experiments, but both Track and Album values were written to the tags. What does this option actually do?

OS is WinXP SP3

Winamp is my music player.

Appreciate any and all help.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KingStyles 

I used to use the replay gain on jriver media center. All files were flac. I found out that when my classical came on it was always clipping. What was happening was that it was trying to boost the -db gain albums back up to 0gain causing clipping. It worked fine when it was lowering all the +gain files. It might not be bit perfect anymore when you lower the output gain.

 

The option for track or album gain means that with track gain, it will adjust each track to the appropriate gain level. The album gain takes the overall album gain average and adjust it. If you like to listen to listen to albums straight through then you will want to use album gain. This will allow the songs on the album to be loader or softer as recorder. Important for albums like pink floyd or classical where you dont want each track to be the same volume. If you do a lot of playlist or smartlist or on random then you may want it on track gain.

I noticed some classical tracks in that big folder did sound a little odd (I did some selected tracks, converting to WAV and back to FLAC with Replay option checked), as if they were starting out too loud, but so far, no clipping.

My system is currently not bit perfect as my onboard sound (RealTek HD) insists on resampling everything, even for the SPDIF output.

Is there an easy way to add replaygain to existing FLAC files?
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roseval 

An easy method:

Download the 30 day trial JR Media Center 15

Configure import to analyze the audio (their phrase for replay gain)

On import it will write the values in the tags

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59338.0

 

Is there any sound quality loss or degradation in using ReplayGain?

 

ReplayGain itself write a value in a tag.

If you apply ReplayGain during playback, digital volume control will be applied

If this affects sound quality depends on the implementation.

If you want to know,

Play a track with/without and compensate for the difference in loudness with the analogue volume control (if you use one)

Thanks for the tips and the link.

I'll give this a go and see what happens. Sounds like it functions similarly to MP3Gain in terms of the analysis except it requires a compatible player to read the ReplayGain tags, which can be turned on an off in Winamp.

I have the volume control in Winamp disabled and use a physical one on my preamp/headphone amp (Windows WAV is at  max).

I have tried to adjust for the volume differences in tagged and untagged FLAC files as best I can, and am having a hard time hearing any SQ degradation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Equus 

Personally, I would try to use software that does the replay gain on playback (if that's what you're talking about).  There are ways to change the file itself, but if you're using FLAC I would assume you would want to keep the file as unaffected from the original as possible.  That and on-the-fly file conversion for synching is why I switched to MediaMonkey from Winamp.  Given Kingstyles' experience with his setup, he probably can speak to it better.

I installed the latest MediaMonkey (had used a much older version some years ago, mainly for tagging), but could never get past the splash screen on starting it up - it just hung. A 2nd download and two more installs failed to get it running. Their forum folks suggested installing the debug version over top to generate a bug report but I honestly didn't have the time or patience to mess with it.

Played with Winamp itself some more, and discovered it will analyze and write ReplayGain tags itself, but the interface is rather clunky when working with batches of tracks that are not related by album.

Amidst all of this I also wanted to transcode the APEs I have to FLAC (Winamp would not write the Replaygain tags to APE files) so I downloaded dbpoweramp Music Converter. Nice piece of software. Transcoded all my APES to FLAC and retained the tags, then analyzed a 3000+ file directory and wrote the ReplayGain tags. It managed to do this quickly and accurately. The interface takes some getting used to, but I am considering buying a license when the 21 day full trial runs out.

So my problem is essentially solved. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. Now I need to learn proper tagging terms with Media Converter and my music collection will be where I want it to be.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sonci 

You just need FOOBAR my friend,

It can do everything, and better, and its FREE
 

 

Hehe.

Maybe you are right.

I have 21 days to work out how well this works for me. I'll add Foobar into the mix the next couple of days, see how I like it (free software alwaysmakes me happy!). dbpoweramp is pretty impressive so far.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sonci 

There`s no 'Love at First Sight' with Foobar, you have to be patient...

I've been hanging around here long enough to know it won't make you swoon with its pretty looks, but once you get to the brains, so it is said, computer audio nirvana.

I have a long way to go in getting my music in proper order, and dbpoweramp's software, as I learn to use it properly (it may look pretty, but there is considerable complexity involved for the user depending upon what you want to do) is doing a very respectable job. But there is a very long way to go, so plenty of folders/files for me to work on with Foobar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Equus 

Oh, it is definitely a quirky beast sometimes, but I went with it specifically because of synching to Cowon devices and converting FLAC to lossy on the fly.  If it weren't for that, I would undoubtedly have gone with Foobar or jriver.  Most of my actual listening is from a Squeezebox using the computer as a server, so the actual desktop is mostly just used for ripping, synching, storage, and organization audio-wise.

 

Yeah...if your collection is anything like mine was, getting everything in order can be a major task.  Really nice once it's all done though.

My computer is now my main source component, but I'm not doing any streaming to other devices, so my needs are somewhat simpler. It feeds my headphone amp, which doubles as preamp for the rest of my audio system, all located in the same room in the house.

For now. I intend to the streaming route eventually.

I may give Media Monkey another go some time later down the road, but for now, wrestling with a beast in excess of 30,000 files is taking all my time and attention. Once I finished with the folder that started this thread I inevitably moved on to the rest of the monster, determined to impose order. I'm not convinced I will emerge victorious. :)