INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: indybrett on February 03, 2005, 08:24:30 am
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I do not see any metadata for Album Gain after analyzing files, yet it does seem to be working. Does it just read the Track Gain for all of the files in the "album" and do an "on-the-fly" calculation?
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Yes, and it works well. For example, if you add a missing file to the album and analyze it the global album gain gets dynamically updated.
Though, you can change the write option for the Album Gain library field and MC will write it to the physical file tags, but that would just generate unnecessary tag writing. The file tag value would never be used.
You can see the Album Gain value if you make that field visible by changing your view options in "View > Customize Current View...".
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I'm a little confused by "album gain". Does it mean that all songs from the same album play at the same level, but two albums may play at different levels?
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Album Replay Gain attempts to find the right correction value by considering the ENTIRE album levels instead of just track by track. I think they are using some type of calc to figure an album gain value from the individual track correction values. It's approximate, but seems to work very well, and a few db up or down is not important.
There is a problem burning with album gain though. When I try it, it says it's burning at +100db and the total static distortion in the resulting cdr tells me it's really trying to burn at that level (clipped).
Does anyone else see this problem?
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Does album gain circumvent the intentions of the album's producer? If one track was recorded with the intention of 'standing out' from the others couldn't album gain potentially alter that?
Furthermore, are significant variences between tracks on an album really that common? I would think (but don't know) most albums are mixed as an album and therefore don't see much change.
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Does album gain circumvent the intentions of the album's producer? If one track was recorded with the intention of 'standing out' from the others couldn't album gain potentially alter that?
I think the point of it is that it does exactly the opposite.
If you use normal Replay Gain, all the tracks on an album are considered individually and therefore all end up at more or less the same volume. This really leads to problems with, say, Pink Floyd albums where short tracks of dialogue/sound effects end up disproportionately loud, and when tracks run into each other there can be a big difference between the volumes.
With Album Gain, the tracks retain the same relative volume to each other that they had originally. So overall, albums are roughly the same volume compared to each other, but within each album there can still be quiet and loud tracks.
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A short version of the answer:
Album gain makes the maximum volume level of different albums to be about the same (it is not an exact science) while it keeps the quieter songs at the right relative volume level (as they were recorded).
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Does album gain circumvent the intentions of the album's producer? If one track was recorded with the intention of 'standing out' from the others couldn't album gain potentially alter that?
Furthermore, are significant variences between tracks on an album really that common? I would think (but don't know) most albums are mixed as an album and therefore don't see much change.
The problem you have described is caused by using "track gain". Track gain makes every track the same volume. Album gain changes the over-all volume of every track on the album by the same amount.
And yes, there can be significant differences in volume on one CD. As much as 12dB. Album gain will preserve these differences.
Hope I didn't make things even more confusing ;)
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With Album Gain, the tracks retain the same relative volume to each other that they had originally. So overall, albums are roughly the same volume compared to each other, but within each album there can still be quiet and loud tracks.
OK...I get that but then how is listening to one album with album gain any different than listening to the same album with no album gain? I guess my stumbling point here is why mess with the signal at all? Just let the original recording speak for itself.
(I must be missing something and will probably have a 'Doh!' moment very soon :))
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You're right. If you are only considering 1 album, there is effectively no difference to enabling/disabling AlbumGain.
More than 1 album...that's where the $$ is. Like stated earlier, it attempts to make the loudest parts of different albums equal in volume while retaining the original volume differences within each separate album.
Helps nicely when I've queued up 25 different albums from different genres.
Best,
brad
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You're right. If you are only considering 1 album, there is effectively no difference to enabling/disabling AlbumGain.
Gotcha. Thanks!