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Author Topic: Normalization vs Replay Gain  (Read 4697 times)

cosmicfx

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Normalization vs Replay Gain
« on: January 23, 2008, 07:07:16 am »

Hi there

1)I've read the help files of MC, but still am confused I'm afraid, of which way is the best to go.
While playing Radio, for instance, alot of the music is played at different volumes.
So as the heading says, which is actually the best way to deal with this ...Normalization or Replay Gain.

Any advice or tips will be welcome.

2) And with regards to Replay Gain...
I tried to follow the help file and create a playlist for replay gain ... quote from the help file ...
Quote
Use the functionality of Smartlists to tell you which files still have to be analyzed.  Create a Smartlist with the following rules:

mediatype=[audio] filetype=mp3 -artist=[] (replaygain==0 or peaklevel==0 or bpm==0 or intensity==0)


When I got to " -artist[] ..." I got lost.


I'm not sure what the hyphen is doing b4 the "artist" , but I added a new rule, added "artist" , but didn't know how to just add "[]" , nevermind the rest of the rules i.e. ...(replaygain==0 or peaklevel==0 or bpm==0 or intensity==0)

Can anyone help please!
Thanks
cosmic
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cwilliams222

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2008, 07:36:42 am »

Hi there
2) And with regards to Replay Gain...
I tried to follow the help file and create a playlist for replay gain ... quote from the help file ...
When I got to " -artist[] ..." I got lost.


I'm not sure what the hyphen is doing b4 the "artist" , but I added a new rule, added "artist" , but didn't know how to just add "[]" , nevermind the rest of the rules i.e. ...(replaygain==0 or peaklevel==0 or bpm==0 or intensity==0)

Can anyone help please!
Thanks
cosmic

Not sure how much help I can be, but I have a smartlist that checks to see what files have not been analyzed, I'm not smart enough to have come up with it on my own so I'm sure I got it from the board somewhere, and here it is:

[Media Type]=[audio] ([Replay Gain]=0 or [Peak Level]=0 or [BPM]=0 or [Intensity]=0)

If all you are concerned about is Replay gain, I would assume you just remove everything after the Replay Gain section, so it looks like:
[Media Type]=[audio] ([Replay Gain]=0)
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cosmicfx

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2008, 09:37:18 am »

Hi Cwilliams

Thanks very much for your input, and I'll use that Smartlist you've given as well, but I'm afraid I'm still confused by all the rest of the help files directions on setting up that smartlist, and by which "Normalization" or "Replay Gain" is better to solve the problem off different volumes while playing.

Again, appreciated, thanks

Ps. I'm also not the smartist of the bunch, and unfortunately also don't have lots of time to get to know all the technicalities of MC ... but hopefully I will before I die ::), or at least get to understand most like the other rocket scientist on MC forum  8) , cause there's always sumthin new.
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Doof

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2008, 10:00:04 am »

You should be able to omit the -Artist=[] part of the smartlist. If I'm reading it correctly, it's saying to exclude any audio file that has an empty Artist field. Not sure why that would be necessary when trying to identify audio files that haven't been analyzed.

But anyway, here's the simple answer to your first question.

Normalization sucks. It really has no use anymore, IMO, ever since Replay Gain was implemented. Normalization takes your audio files and makes them all the same volume, but it basically makes the entire track the same volume, so the louder parts of the song are the same volume as the quieter parts. The result is just a muddied mess.

Replay Gain, on the other hand, makes all of your songs play back at the same relative volume, but leaves quiet or louder parts of the song alone. So while all the songs you play will sound the same volume-wise, you still get a natural sounding song.

To use Replay Gain, there are actually two steps to take. The first is to analyze the files. MC uses the information it collects to determine what volume to play the songs back with. The smartlist you're asking about is only used to determine which files haven't been analyzed yet. But you can just select every audio file in your library and tell MC to analyze them. It'll skip songs that have already been analyzed. To tell it to analyze them, just select the files, right click and choose Library Tools->Analzye Audio (I think - I'm at a Mac right now so I might be off on the exact menu options to pick). A dialog box should open up listing all the files you've selected. Just click the Analyze button and then, if you've got a lot of files, go to bed or go spend some time with your family or something. This part takes a while.

Once the analysis is done, the only thing left to do is tell MC to actually use Replay Gain. You do that by going into the DSP studio (IIRC you do that by right clicking the EQ button up in the player area and choosing DSP Studio). in here, you should see on the left an option for Replay Gain. Check the box next to it to activate it, and then click on it to view its options. You can play around in here, but what I do (and since you said this is primarily for Radio mode use) is to choose Replay Gain (instead of Album Gain), tell it to set the volume based on the current playlist, and check the box that says something about enabling clip protection. Again, I know my descriptions suck, but that's because I'm on this stupid Mac. :P

Once those two steps are done, you should notice that your music all plays back at the same relative volume.
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cosmicfx

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2008, 11:10:55 am »

Hey Doof

Thanks alot for such a detailed answer, as well as direct ... (Normalization sucks).
That makes it much easier ... so normalization is now outa the picture.

  • A few of your descriptions were off , but I think I managed to follow you . :).. for instance , when opening the DSP Studio ... what you said to look for is "Replay Gain" is actually "Volume Leveling" ...Is this correct? I'm on the right track, right?
  • For the "Mode" in "volume Leveling" I selected "Track Based" as apposed to "album based"
  • At "adjustments" , I selected "Automatic based on current playlist" , as apposed to "fixed". But what if I'm not playing from a specific "playlist" , just from my main "audio view scheme". Does selecting "Automatic based on current playlist" then make a difference if not selected from a playlist?
    Or should I then use "fixed"? , which I'm not sure how that affects the "Replay regain/volume leveling".
  • And lastly, after analysing the whole library, I read that it is embedded into the actual audio files.
    So does that mean , that even after redoing my pc, loading MC again, and then loading the Library backup I made(after the analysis) , that I won't have to do the analysis over again?

    Again, thanks, and sorry for all the questions....

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Doof

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2008, 11:46:47 am »

Hey Doof

Thanks alot for such a detailed answer, as well as direct ... (Normalization sucks).
That makes it much easier ... so normalization is now outa the picture.

  • A few of your descriptions were off , but I think I managed to follow you . :).. for instance , when opening the DSP Studio ... what you said to look for is "Replay Gain" is actually "Volume Leveling" ...Is this correct? I'm on the right track, right?
  • For the "Mode" in "volume Leveling" I selected "Track Based" as apposed to "album based"

Yeah, I knew my descriptions weren't correct, but I'm glad they were at least close enough for you to figure out what I was trying to say. :)


Quote
  • At "adjustments" , I selected "Automatic based on current playlist" , as apposed to "fixed". But what if I'm not playing from a specific "playlist" , just from my main "audio view scheme". Does selecting "Automatic based on current playlist" then make a difference if not selected from a playlist?
    Or should I then use "fixed"? , which I'm not sure how that affects the "Replay regain/volume leveling".

In this case, the "current playlist" is always Playing Now. When you start playing a playlist, all of those files are copied into Playing Now, so even if you just pick the Audio view scheme, it'll still base the adjustment on what's in Playing Now, if that makes sense.

Quote
  • And lastly, after analysing the whole library, I read that it is embedded into the actual audio files.
    So does that mean , that even after redoing my pc, loading MC again, and then loading the Library backup I made(after the analysis) , that I won't have to do the analysis over again?

    Again, thanks, and sorry for all the questions....


Correct. As long as you have MC set to write data to the file's tags, you'll only have to do the analysis once.
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cosmicfx

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2008, 12:25:24 pm »

Thanks for crearing evering up ... but I lied, now there is just one more thing ::)

when you said ...

Quote
Correct. As long as you have MC set to write data to the file's tags, you'll only have to do the analysis once.

.. did you mean this setting in MC options, the one circled(squared) in red?





(Thought Bubble)"Sheesh! I hope this is the last question for Doof. Feeling like I owe him BIG time..."  :)
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Doof

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2008, 01:54:01 pm »

That's the one. I probably should have said "As long as you didn't tell MC NOT to save tag info in the files" since I believe it does by default.
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cosmicfx

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2008, 02:22:04 pm »

Thanks Doof! You been an huge help.

Cosmic
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JONCAT

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #9 on: July 04, 2008, 10:48:52 am »

Quote
Normalization sucks. It really has no use anymore, IMO, ever since Replay Gain was implemented. Normalization takes your audio files and makes them all the same volume, but it basically makes the entire track the same volume, so the louder parts of the song are the same volume as the quieter parts. The result is just a muddied mess.
Isn't what you describe here actually Compression?

RG is somewhat like normalization, maybe best explained as "external" normalization? I don't know. I'm pretty sure RG doesn't raise db until the highest peak is at 0db but it does play back all files at a target db which is different.

I'm trying to answer some questions others have posed such as, "Is RG detrimental to sound quality".

Could you still use RG and successfully do the DTS over S/PDIF? I thought all DSP has to be turned off for this bit perfect output IIRC, which includes RG?

thanks anyone
DC
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hit_ny

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #10 on: July 04, 2008, 02:41:40 pm »

Normalisation is permanent

Replay- Gain is not, setting Replay Gain for a file does not touch the 'actual' sound properties of the file at all. It's a value calculated during AA and stored in the tag [Replay Gain] which is used by MC to set the volume level.

You may or not choose to save that tag to files, either way MC will use it if present in the library.
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JONCAT

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Re: Normalization vs Replay Gain
« Reply #11 on: July 04, 2008, 03:09:35 pm »

Normalisation is permanent

Replay- Gain is not, setting Replay Gain for a file does not touch the 'actual' sound properties of the file at all. It's a value calculated during AA and stored in the tag [Replay Gain] which is used by MC to set the volume level.

You may or not choose to save that tag to files, either way MC will use it if present in the library.

Exactly!

Thanks for stating the obvious for me (no sarcasm btw). Normalization is permanent and invasive as it modifies the properties of the file.

So my guess was that RG data is used by MC which applies a "hidden" internal volume control ? 32bit like the "normal" internal volume control? On other forums peopel have been likening RG to Normalization when they are actually VERY different.

thanks

DC
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