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[EpF]

Hi folks; I have a question that the internet hasn't been able to answer  !

I've been sorting through some duplicates and sometimes the only significant difference between them is the 'scalefactor' (I'm using EncSpot to get this information).

I'm trying to decide which duplicate to keep based on the quality of the encoding, so what am I looking for in a scalefactor; high or low?

[GHammer]

Comes from LAME settings.

--scale <arg> multiply PCM input by <arg>
--scale-l <arg> scale channel 0 (left) input (multiply PCM data) by <arg>
--scale-r <arg> scale channel 1 (right) input (multiply PCM data) by <arg>

This is a way to adjust the 'loudness' at playback without normalizing the files.
If you use MP3Gain this is the data it adjusts.

I've never been able to find what the default is if not set explicitly, so I use --scale 1

[hit_ny]

So could one conclude then that scale factor does not matter since MC adjusts for loudness already.

I'm facing a similar question...given two dupes one from an original album and one from a best of, which one to delete , given similar encoding.

I'm inclined to keep the file from the album that has a higher overall average score.

[modelmaker]

In the end, doesn't it really come down to how it sounds? Shouldn't one's ear be the final judge?

At some point the "numbers" really don't matter anymore if there's no audible improvement.

Can the audio system actually reproduce the difference? An audio system is only as good as the weakest link, which is usually  the speaker system, with generally a 5 to 10% distorn level.

And here it seems we talking about audio gain, in which case it wouldn't affect the quality of the sound anyway (unless it was overloading your input). Again, the ears would be the judge.

Just my 2 cents.