Steve:
USER ERROR!
I noted that it seemed that Replay Gain wasn't working. DOH! Realized last night that 600 or so songs hadn't been Analyzed. Did that, resync'd all seems
really great this morning. I'm loving this.
KARL:
I think maybe we need to explain what Replay Gain is in the context of MC9 and how it benefits you in MC9 as it relates to the iPod.
I apologize in advance if you know this already, I just want to be thorough.
Replay Gain was designed, not for the iPod, but for MC9 to allow users to "normalize" the volume of their songs. Because CD1 might have been recorded louder than CD2, it can cause problems when listening to playlists in MC9 (or on the iPod). Now as to the specifics of how it works, Steve can elaborate on that. Or check the MC9 help file. Bottom line it stores a db level adjustment in MC9's database so that when you enable DSP Audio (a feature of MC9) it will use this value to raise or lower the volume of each song based upon the db adjustment of the Replay Gain value. It does
not alter the mp3 file in any way.
OK, now that that's figured out. How does it help you? Well, the iPod also has a database field to store this Replay Gain information. So, when you "Apply Replay Gain on Upload", MC9 populates the iPod's database w/this adjustment. Now, it's not necessarily going to make each song lounder, that's not the point. Some songs will have a raised volume, others will have a decreased volume. So they all sound roughly as if they were recorded at the same volume.
OK, but you probably want to boost your volume (I'm guessing your a euro-podder? Could be wrong on that).
Easy, Steve has added another feature: Set Replay Gain Adjustment. This allows you to essentially boost (or lower if you wished) the replay gain values on all your songs.
So, let's say you set this value to +5db. If one of your songs was analyzed w/a Replay Gain value of -10db and another song was analyzed at +5db each of these would be changed to -5db and +10db when uploaded to the iPod.
Hope that helps things a little. It's a little different than Xplay does things (if that's where you first tried this) and much better as it does the boost relative to its analzed Replay Gain setting. So things all sound as if recorded at the same volume.
Sorry for the novel, but I thought it'd help.
Adam