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Topic: ReplayGain for dummies (Read 3283 times) previous topic - next topic
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ReplayGain for dummies

Hi,

I'm using "Replay Gain > Scan as a single album" to normalize my entire music collection and that works fine (especially relevant for listening to music while driving so I don't have to constantly adjust the volume). What I don't know (and can't find anything about) is this: if I add a new song to the collection do I have to rescan everything? And do I have to copy the files to my phone again after rescanning? Or is it enough to use something like MP3Gain for the new track(s)?

Re: ReplayGain for dummies

Reply #1 –
Quote from: NadCat on
I'm using "Replay Gain > Scan as a single album" to normalize my entire music collection
Not the best idea. If you select your entire music collection and scan it as a single album, it's going to treat everything as if it were a single album. It will set same album gain to everything, and it will set same album peak to everything - that is, to the loudest thing in your entire collection.

Likely you rather want to select everything that is in an album, and scan as albums by tags or by folders.
(Both "by tags" and "by folders" have their downsides: "by folders" might have strange effects if you don't have each album in one folder - if say you got a few bunched together, or if you like myself have a folder per ripped CD, that will assign different volume to CD1 and CD2. By tags might have strange effects if you have several albums with the same artist/album title, e.g. different masterings of the same album.
In both cases you can search up the ones you want and rescan afterwards.)

What I did was to search up multi-CDs and - making sure to never catch two editions of the same release (or different collections both named "Very Best of" or a single and an album with the same title) and scan as albums by tags; repeat until all multi-CDs were done; run the rest by folder; then I found out that well maybe various artists compilations weren't necessarily well scanned as albums, and then I just removed the %replaygain_album_gain% and %replaygain_album_peak% tags (leaving the track gain and track peak tags in place).

Quote from: NadCat on
What I don't know (and can't find anything about) is this: if I add a new song to the collection do I have to rescan everything?
No: foobar2000 will by default omit those which already have an RG tag.  If absolutely everything you select has an RG tag, it will ask if you really want to rescan all.
You can also search up those new with %replaygain_track_peak% MISSING.


Quote from: NadCat on
Or is it enough to use something like MP3Gain for the new track(s)?
ReplayGain tags tell the player to "adjust volume upon playback". If your player honors RG tags, then you don't need MP3Gain, which alters the audio itself.

Re: ReplayGain for dummies

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Porcus on
If you select your entire music collection and scan it as a single album, it's going to treat everything as if it were a single album. It will set same album gain to everything, and it will set same album peak to everything - that is, to the loudest thing in your entire collection.

Yeah, that is what I want it to do. Everything is supposed to be played at the same volume.

Quote from: Porcus on
No: foobar2000 will by default omit those which already have an RG tag.

It still takes a long time (~7 minutes) even if only one song doesn't have RG, that's why I'm wondering.

Quote from: Porcus on
If your player honors RG tags, then you don't need MP3Gain, which alters the audio itself.

That's good to know, I thought MP3Gain was also setting RG values, not actually changing the file.

Re: ReplayGain for dummies

Reply #3 –
Quote from: NadCat on
Yeah, that is what I want it to do. Everything is supposed to be played at the same volume.
Then using "Scan as a single album" is a bad idea.

Re: ReplayGain for dummies

Reply #4 –
What lvqcl said.

If you use album mode at all, then scan all as single album will adjust every track by the same amount.
For album mode, you want every track on the same album to be adjusted by the same amount - but louder albums attenuated more.

Re: ReplayGain for dummies

Reply #5 –
Okay thanks, seems I've misunderstood how RG works. Does scan as album (by tags) go by album tags alone or does it take artists into account? I do have artists with identical album names

Ah, nevermind. I tried it and songs with the same name have different album peaks. Thanks for the help.

Re: ReplayGain for dummies

Reply #6 –
Under Preferences -> Advanced -> ReplayGain Scanner you will find "Album Grouping Pattern" as %album artist% | %date% | %album%

You can customize that pattern too, say if you use an ALBUMVERSION tag.

If you use "Various Artists" as album artist for ... various artist compilations, you will get all "Best of British Blues" from the same year together. But scanning as albums isn't "dangerous", as a track gain and a track peak tag will always be written, and an album gain and album peak tag can be deleted afterwards.