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[yonkiman]

When I last looked into this, in October 2010, MC was supporting ReplayGain track tags but not album tags. 

Here are the tags MC16 generates:


Here are the tags foobar2000 generates:


MC is generating the correct tags for track gain, but it's not generating album gain tags at all.

Where I left it was here:

However, Media Center does not write album gain values to the file tag of any format.  You will have to use track gain on the device.

That answer didn't help me much since a lot of devices rely on album gain values, including my rockbox.  (There's a reason the replaygain album tags exist, though I know MC doesn't need them because of its database.)  I pressed further for album gain support (offline) but the answer was no.

So does this comment

@yonkiman, please start a thread if you have an issue.  Media Center saves Replay Gain in the standard format for all known tag formats.

means album gain tags are now supported?  If so I'll happily upgrade to 17.

Thanks,
Fred

[sKiZo]

+1 on the request ... I think ... maybe it's me?

Even playing exclusively within MC17, I find that I have to fiddle with the system volume between albums. I'd thought replay gain was supposed to eliminate that?

Granted, most of my problems have been with vinyl rips. I tended to be fairly conservative on recording peak values when I started doing those. As time went on (and I actually read the book) I did learn that I needed to be more aggressive to maintain the original dynamic range and adjusted the process accordingly. Those play well with the current JRiver analysis, but ... I was looking thru the tags the other day to see if there was a "master" gain setting that could be set for individual albums to compensate AFTER application of the track RG settings. Yet another layer, but one I feel could have major benefits.

PS ... I know about "fixed" vs "automatic based on current playlist" in the volume leveling dialog ... but that doesn't seem to do much. Neither does "track based" vs "album based" mode. None of those seem consistent, at least with my setup. Be nice to have another option where you could set your system volume based on a reference recording (similar to what we do with pink noise diagnostics), then match everything to that. Not sure what all would be involved, but I'd think it'd be doable ...

[Matt]

You said:

JRiver is not interested in supporting ReplayGain in a way that is compatible with most portable devices.  It would be a very, very simple addition to their software.

This statement is a bit inflammatory.

Media Center was the first audio program to embrace Replay Gain, about 10 years ago.

Media Center 17 makes it possible to apply Replay Gain while converting for a handheld.

I think you're asking for Media Center to write Album Gain tags.  We don't do this because Album Gain is a calculated field in Media Center (meaning we don't do a second analyze pass on the full album).  You can argue the technical merits of this approach, but switching is not "very, very simple."

We could simply write the calculated album gain values to the tags, but I'm not sure if that change would be welcomed by other users.

[yonkiman]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for responding.  You're right that that quote sounded a bit inflammatory, and it definitely sounds like something I might have said in the past (though I can't find when/where when I google for it).  I'm trying not to be inflammatory any more - it certainly hasn't helped my cause to date.  To the extent I have been I apologize.

Media Center was the first audio program to embrace Replay Gain, about 10 years ago.

Media Center was first to do a lot of things, and does most things better than anyone else - that's why I've used it forever and championed it to friends.  I wouldn't be surprised if MC was my introduction to Replay Gain.

Media Center 17 makes it possible to apply Replay Gain while converting for a handheld.

I agree, your handheld conversion/syncing capability is fantastic for all sorts of reasons.  And a few years ago you changed it so the replaygain tags added to my flacs by foobar would survive conversion to ogg, which has been my work-around ever since.

I think you're asking for Media Center to write Album Gain tags.

Exactly!

We don't do this because Album Gain is a calculated field in Media Center (meaning we don't do a second analyze pass on the full album).  You can argue the technical merits of this approach, but switching is not "very, very simple."

I'll get back to this in a second.

We could simply write the calculated album gain values to the tags, but I'm not sure if that change would be welcomed by other users.

If you make it an option, disabled by default, then I can't imagine a single user would find it unwelcome.

I'm really trying to understand what is going on here.  First you say it's not simple, then you actually use the word "simply" in a description of how to do exactly what I want.

What has been frustrating for me is that you guys are excellent coders, but even better than that you're great system designers - you really think about how everything should work, you're thinking about the future, expandability, compatibility, etc.  You don't just code yourself into a corner and hack your way out.  I instantly recognized that over 10 years ago when I was looking for software to manage and organize my music collection.  

So I have never understood why you seem to have no desire to address the (to my knowledge) only area where you fall a little short, and lesser software like foobar and winamp actually does a better job.  I honestly thought in 2006 (or whenever) that you'd appreciate the suggestions and research I did to bring this to your attention and let you know what needs to be changed to be more compatible with the outside world.

I don't understand the comment that adding this feature/tag is in any way going to mess anything up - have it turned off by default if that's a concern.

I also don't buy that this is hard for you guys to do.  You guys have proven you can do anything better than your competitors.  JimH mentioned there's a lot of time in the backend - QA, etc., and that's a good point.  So it's not that it's hard, it's that for some reason (possibly a very good one) you don't want to do it enough to spend the resources/$$$ on implementing it.  I understand that there's a lot of different, higher priority features you'd rather spend your resources on.  But how does this not get addressed major version after major version?

And I certainly don't understand the idea that this is not a useful option.  It's the only way I can keep albums playing on my Rockbox at the uniform ReplayGain level while maintaining the original relative volume of the album tracks.  And I know there are lots of people using MC with Rockbox and other players where this matters.

I have a work-around (though not all of your customers are technical enough to do what I do or understand the root cause of the issue), so I'll be fine (if slightly inconvenienced) if it never gets addressed.  At this point I'd really just like to understand why there's no interest in this.  Is my usage case really that insignificant?

-Fred

[Matt]

The way we deal with Album Gain deviates slightly from the original spec.  It's functionally equivalent in that albums respect intentional track level differences, and different albums play at a consistent level.  However, the actual decibel value for the entire album could vary slightly from the value you would get if you analyzed the full album in one pass as the original spec described.

This makes it ambiguous whether we should write our calculated album gain value to the tag.  Since it's always calculated in Media Center, the tag has no value to us.

If the tag is helpful to some external thing like RockBox, that's an argument for writing it.  But since the tag deviates from the standard and isn't a tag we would read, that's an argument for not writing it.

This has not been a common topic, but we'll follow popular opinion.  If the thread reaches +10 on the vote count, we'll put the change on our to-do list.

Thanks.

[vagskal]

But since the tag deviates from the standard and isn't a tag we would read, that's an argument for not writing it.

That is a compelling argument for not writing MC's own album gain values to the file tags. The whole point of RPG is to get an even listening experience so the RPG values have to be calculated using the same method/standard for all files.

I have, however, not seen any convincing argument for MC to deviate from specs in an area where adherence to specs is essential for the user experience, should the user want to use several tools to calculate RPG and for playback.

[sKiZo]

Maybe another topic, but does JRiver do normalize on demand?

I solved most of the album gain issues on my vinyl rips to FLAC by running them thru another program (WavePad) to normalize the levels to 75%. That's a pretty close match to the average output of the cd rips. I then ran the new versions of the vinyl rips back thru the analyze feature in JRiver to reset those values based on the new input levels. If I find a track that's still not right, no biggie to re-normalize that at a higher or lower level as needed. Not sure if there's any degradation on file quality or accumulative effect involved here ... nothing noticeable ... yet. The tracks I've updated play back strong and tight ... whatever that means. <G>

Strangely enough, the software I use for ripping vinyl (Soundforge) shows the meters in the yellow with occasional bumps to the red - which is exactly where I should be setting the input levels when recording to maximize dynamic range. I use the adjustable output on my phono stage to set that. Much further, and I do start to see clipping. Not quite sure what's going on there either.

[yonkiman]

This has not been a common topic, but we'll follow popular opinion.  If the thread reaches +10 on the vote count, we'll put the change on our to-do list.

Thanks for hearing me out, Matt.

Cheers,
Fred