How to remove ReplayGain

[TheKisho]

I have more then several flac tracks that contain ReplayGain.  I don't like ReplayGain or any normalization.  These aren't tracks that I ripped [I would if a CD existed on this content] but are free and legal downloads [so it wasn't my choice, they just have it].  They are tagged with ReplayGain if I look at the extra meta data.  From what I understand this normalization isn't hard coded to the track.  It normalizes on the fly.  If this is true and this file is true to the original pre-normalized file how do I completely strip any and all information pertaining to ReplayGain within these files (to stop programs from normalizing these tracks).  Is there a program that can do it for me or few simple steps and a method to verify.
 
 
P.S.  There isn't a simple way to tell if somebody used level 8 when encoding flac files is there?  Why isn't everybody using level 8 to begin with?  There is no reason not to.

 

[thuantran]

In foobar2000, add those files into a playlist then right click on them -> ReplayGain -> Remove.... to delete ReplayGain information from tracks. Or you can simply disable ReplayGain processing inside foobar Preferences->Playback. About your flac encoding level question, I can confirm your finding, there's no easy way AFAIK, and why ppl don't use it is because FLAC level 8 does not compress much better than level 5 but decode much slower.

 

[khaos974]

Easiest thing in the world, dump all you files into a single playlist in foobar2k, select all, right click > Replay gain > Remove replay gain from files.
 
By the way, if you use foobar2k as a player, you can choose whether or not to take replay gain information into account.

PS: No, there;s no reason not to, on the other hand you gain at most 3-5% from level 5 (default setting) to level 8.

 

[TheKisho]

Thank you both for the response.  I'm going to get foobar2000 for that task.  I don't want to just turn it off because I use a bunch of players, it's just easier to remove the trigger.
 
Any little bit of space savings is worth it for a big library.  It'll mean extra few songs every 100-1000 files~.  I do it because processing power is not really a problem, it's only a few seconds longer.