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[AlanDistro]

The volume leveling feature is great, but I have a specific problem I'm running into on a small handful of albums.

In particular today it's Janet Jackson's "janet." album from 1993 (but this has happened on other titles as well).

The "janet." album has short interludes (indexed as separate tracks) between almost every song. So while the legit songs have a Volume Level (ReplayGain) of, say, -6dB.... the interludes (because they're so quiet) have a Volume Level (ReplayGain) of +14dB...

So when JRiver averages those to produce a ReplayGain for the whole album, it is considerably louder than the surrounding albums because it doesn't look like JRiver takes the track's length into consideration (in a perfect world, JRiver would see track 1 (an interlude) is 30 seconds, and track 2 (a song) is 5 minutes, and would give 10x's the weight to the ReplayGain of track 2).

All that said, is there a way I can manually edit the calculated ReplayGain of an album without affecting the individual track levels (for shuffling) so that the album does in fact play at a relative equal volume to all other albums?

[AlanDistro]

I ran a quick test by turning off all of the interludes (unchecking the playable box) and then JRiver calculates the album ReplayGain as -12.4dB according to the Audio Path changes dialog. When I turn them all back on and stop and start playback, JRiver calculates the album ReplayGain as only -4.3dB, so the album is (on average) being played back 8 decibels louder than it should be (due to the numerous interludes).

[~OHM~]

if you put them in a playlist and play the playlist I think it would solve your issue

[AlanDistro]

if you put them in a playlist and play the playlist I think it would solve your issue

For sure! I could also just turn the interludes off (accomplishes the same as a playlist). Or, more likely, I could re-rip and combine the interludes with the song they precede. That means I'll have to hear the interludes when shuffling, but most are between 4-10 seconds and flow right into the actual song, so not a big deal. Making the interlude/song one track would actually do what I want... give the length/volume of the song more weight than the super short interlude. But I prefer not to make custom versions of titles unless absolutely necessary.

[RD James]

I think a solution that would work more universally, and require less input from the user, would be to have a way to tag an album which forces it to use track-based leveling.
This was discussed when the new volume leveling system was being implemented, but that feature never made it.
The only way I know of to force an album to use track-based leveling is to set the Media Sub Type to 'Podcast' rather than 'Music'. Does that improve things?

[RoderickGI]

Have you tried just blanking out the [Volume Level (R128)] tag for the interludes? Maybe that will result in it not being used for the Album.

Note that to blank it out you have to scroll down to the bottom of the list where you will find a blank value to select.

I expected the same blank value to be available for the [Volume Level (ReplayGain)] tag, but there isn't one. That seems to be an oversight. Paek Level and Dynamic Range tags all have the option of selecting a blank value.

MC should be using the [Volume Level (R128)] tag value anyway, rather than the  [Volume Level (ReplayGain)] tag, shouldn't it?

[AlanDistro]

I think a solution that would work more universally, and require less input from the user, would be to have a way to tag an album which forces it to use track-based leveling.
This was discussed when the new volume leveling system was being implemented, but that feature never made it.
The only way I know of to force an album to use track-based leveling is to set the Media Sub Type to 'Podcast' rather than 'Music'. Does that improve things?

Unfortunately that would make for a very un-even sound for the album as the interludes transition seamless/gapless-ly into the actual songs, having a 15+dB jump between them would be jarring.

I ended up re-ripping it and appending the interludes to the actual songs. So tracks 1 and 2 become a new extended track 1, tracks 3 and 4 become a new extended track 2, etc. This worked flawlessly and now the album plays back at -11.8, or right where it should be. Not ideal because it creates a unique version, but it's fine, I kept the original (just tagged it as a duplicate safety copy) and the unique version (which will actually be played).

[AlanDistro]

Have you tried just blanking out the [Volume Level (R128)] tag for the interludes? Maybe that will result in it not being used for the Album.

Note that to blank it out you have to scroll down to the bottom of the list where you will find a blank value to select.

I expected the same blank value to be available for the [Volume Level (ReplayGain)] tag, but there isn't one. That seems to be an oversight. Paek Level and Dynamic Range tags all have the option of selecting a blank value.

MC should be using the [Volume Level (R128)] tag value anyway, rather than the  [Volume Level (ReplayGain)] tag, shouldn't it?

Deleting [Volume Level (R128)] tags on the interludes didn't affect the volume leveling of the album at all, but deleting the [Volume Level (ReplayGain)] tag did work! I'll have to be careful not to re-analyse the audio on that album, but yeah, that solution is even better than combining tracks. Thanks!