I have a collection of FLAC-files that have been ripped with dBPowerAmp and tagged according to standards. During the ripping process I also calculated Album Gain and Album Peak and wrote that info to tags. I didn't calculate Track Gain and Peak 'cause I wasn't going to use it. I recently moved from a Squeezebox-solution (where Album Gain worked) to MC and found out that Album Gain ain't working no more.
You could have applied both. The processing speed would have been the same and the files would have been more compatible with various Replay Gain implementations (including MC).
Reading on the forum, I get the idea that MC can't read Album Gain tags and that the way it works in MC is that Album Gain is based on Track Gain and calculated on the fly. So, I then tried to have dBPowerAmp set Track Gain (and Track Peak) values, which made it possible for me to use Track Gain in Volume Leveling; but not Album Gain - nothing happens when I ask MC to calculate Album Gain even though there now is Track Gain info (and that info is cleary read, since it works with setting Track Gain). What's the catch?, is basically what I'm wondering about.
Contrary to what was said in one of the replies, MC has an Album Gain field. MC uses the track gain values when it populates the field. A so called "Album Analyzer" is responsible of this task. You can add the Album Gain field as a column to a list view or to Action Window > Tag to see if it is populated.
It is a bit tricky to force MC to populate the album gain value in already imported files without running the "Analyze Audio" tool (as you don't want to change the file tags). Just using the "Update library (from tags)" tool does not trigger the album gain calculation process even when the new track gain values are imported. You have a few options:
- You can run the "Analyze Audio" tool without changing the physical files when tagging is disabled in
Options > General > Importing & Tagging > Update tags when file info changes (uncheck). MC will then store the calculated values only in its database. To make using this option easier you can add a toolbar button for enabling and disabling it (the button has a visual indicator that shows the status. Yellow color means that tagging is enabled.)
- You can temporarily change the "Album" or "Track #" tags. For example: disable file tagging, select all files, change all track numbers to 1, and finally do "undo" (Ctrl+Z). The album gain values will be added if the track Replay Gain values are present in the database (check the "Replay Gain" library field to verify this).
- You can move the files to a new base folder (outside MC) and import them as new files to MC (you may not prefer to do this because you would lose all statistical data).
For those people who possibly wonder why I don't just analyze all my files with MC and then get everything I want, the reason is a bit strange: here where I come from (Norway) we're allowed to share files (like music) between close friends. So my music server is synced with the music server of a close friend of mine, and hence we have the same files and tags. If I start analyzing all my audio with MC it means we'll have to sync everything on our servers (again) - and that took forever and a day last time. But, this friend of mine has a licensed dBPowerAmp (but not MC), so if we can both set our servers to calculate Track Gain and Track Peak we will end up with the same data and no need for sync'ing.
I guess the "Update tags when file info changes" option (and its toolbar button) will be very useful for you.
