More > Media Center 14 (Development Ended)
Replaygain Values for FLAC files
Alex B:
But which implementation is more correct, i.e. represents better the perceived loudness of the complete album?
- The method that splits the whole album in 50 ms blocks, measures each individual block, sorts the resulting values in the loudness order and picks the value that is at the "95% point" in the list of the values (if I understood the explanation in the following link correctly: http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/statistical_process.html).
or
- The method that calculates the album gain value from the separately analyzed track values? (The individual tracks are measured as explained above.)
I'd guess that there is no correct answer. Each album is different and also each listener may have a different opinion about the experienced overall loudness during a long listening session that consists of several individual tracks.
Alex B:
I'd like to add that I use MC's "Album Gain" and "Automatic adjustment" settings most of the time.
It seems to work fine for me. It keeps the current "Playing Now" list as loud as possible without causing clipping, compensates quite well the clearly audible volume level differences between different albums, and keeps also the quieter album tracks as quiet as the artist intended.
I use the same settings also when I listen to a mixed playlist that consists only of single tracks from various albums.
In the rare occasions when I really want to play background music at a low volume level I may switch to the track gain mode.
EDIT
However, the "automatic adjustment" can work nicely only if the Playing Now list always contains lots of tracks. For instance, if there is only one track in the list it will just make the track as loud as possible. If you play one track or very few tracks at a time it is better to use a fixed adjustment.
vagskal:
--- Quote from: Alex B on August 13, 2009, 11:19:43 am ---But which implementation is more correct, i.e. represents better the perceived loudness of the complete album?
- The method that splits the whole album in 50 ms blocks, measures each individual block, sorts the resulting values in the loudness order and picks the value that is at the "95% point" in the list of the values (if I understood the explanation in the following link correctly: http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/statistical_process.html).
or
- The method that calculates the album gain value from the separately analyzed track values? (The individual tracks are measured as explained above.)
I'd guess that there is no correct answer. Each album is different and also each listener may have a different opinion about the experienced overall loudness during a long listening session that consists of several individual tracks.
--- End quote ---
I agree with you that there probably is no correct answer to the question of which method to calculate album gain is the most correct. I am sure I will be very happy upon playback in MC with MC's method, just like you are. I was not trying to use the existing replay gain values, calculated by dBpoweramp or foobar, in the tags in my mp3 files as a point of reference for the most correct replay gain values.
The whole point of applying RPG is to get a more "even" listening experience when listening to your music collection. Therefore it is counterproductive to apply RPG to your collection using different tools which produce different results on the same files. My point was that if MC was to write "standard" album gain tags it should/must use the de facto standard for calculating album gain (at least when writing the tag; inside MC all is well since MC wisely uses only one method, its own, to apply album gain upon playback) since the result of MC's current method is sometimes significantly different from what you get in your tags with tools using the de facto standard (such as dBpoweramp, foobar and, I think, also MediaMonkey since I believe that it uses the same method as MP3Gain but stores ID3 tags instead of APE tags).
Alex B:
I am sure the JRiver developers will carefully consider your arguments before they take any further steps.
For now, especially if you want to use also other players, you could just analyze the files with some other program instead of using the built-in analyzer.
MC can read the track gain and peak tags correctly and use its own album gain system automatically if the file format is MP3 or FLAC.
vagskal:
--- Quote from: Alex B on August 13, 2009, 01:12:01 pm ---I am sure the JRiver developers will carefully consider your arguments before they take any further steps.
For now, especially if you want to use also other players, you could just analyze the files with some other program instead of using the built-in analyzer.
MC can read the track gain and peak tags correctly and use its own album gain system automatically if the file format is MP3 or FLAC.
--- End quote ---
Yes, I will do that, and I have not experienced any issues regarding how MC is using RPG values already in the tags (except of course for the flac issue, which I hope will be solved shortly) for playback. It is just a pity that I for compatability reasons cannot use MC to apply or re-apply RPG when needed.
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