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Topic: replaygain for wave files (Read 3654 times) previous topic - next topic
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replaygain for wave files

is there any reason to use replaygain for wave files ? i mean, if the song is clipped before replaygain it will be clipping afterwards also. only at another level. (for example led zeppelin - whole lotta love).
i'm not talking about clipping introduced by mp3 encoders here.

i know that replaygain makes all albums sound equally loud but if i don't need that is there any advantage with replaygain ?

another replaygain question:
if i for example have a headroom of 100db => 0-100db, imagine a test song that is 100seconds long and every second has tone that is always 1db louder. at the end of the song it will be 100db. now if i apply replaygain to this song the replaygain values should be -11db. what does replaygain do with the first 11 seconds of the song ? cut them away ?

replaygain for wave files

Reply #1 –
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i know that replaygain makes all albums sound equally loud but if i don't need that is there any advantage with replaygain ?

To make them equally loud is the hole idea. Great if you want make a compilation cd-r, no irritating volume changes from song to song.
But I don't know if there is much more you can do with just the replaygain. But, with wavegain for instance, you can select to use dither and noise-shaping in addition, which will 'prevent' the lowest signals from being lost. This is great if you're making music in 24bit, and want the resulting music at 16bit and 89dB SPL.

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now if i apply replaygain to this song the replaygain values should be -11db.


Should it? 89dB SPL is the average loudness, where in your case you have 100dB only at the very end.And in addition it depends of the frequencies in your testsong. I don't know what the result from your test will be....

replaygain for wave files

Reply #2 –
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To make them equally loud is the hole idea.

not quite. i think it also is useful for clipping that is introduced by mp3 encoders for example

replaygain for wave files

Reply #3 –
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To make them equally loud is the hole idea.

not quite. i think it also is useful for clipping that is introduced by mp3 encoders for example

For me it is useful for those CD's that are just too loud and clearly clip when listening to them on my home stereo. I've already ripped and ReplayGain'd a few CD's that have such annoyances and created new audio CD's.

replaygain for wave files

Reply #4 –
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is there any reason to use replaygain for wave files ? i mean, if the song is clipped before replaygain it will be clipping afterwards also. only at another level. (for example led zeppelin - whole lotta love).
i'm not talking about clipping introduced by mp3 encoders here.

Clipping occurs when the amplitude of a sound is above the maximum allowed recording level.  Clipping is a clamping of the data to a maximum value, (in digital media), 32,767 in 16-bit data.  If you reduce the volume (replaygain) the clipping will no longer occur, but the wave will have permanent sound loss as a result of digital information destroyed when the wave file's amplitude has been raised above 0dB.  Mainly transients are destroyed, or muddled as a result of a high volume master.  If you apply replaygain to a wave file that exceeds it's maximum recording level, the resulting file will not exceed the maximum recording level and will also not clip, but the destroyed transients and whatever else was pushed above the 0dB limit will be permanently destroyed.

replaygain for wave files

Reply #5 –
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To make them equally loud is the hole idea.

not quite. i think it also is useful for clipping that is introduced by mp3 encoders for example

Except any clipping introduced by MP3 encoding is more than likely to be more or less inaudible.  We're talking only a couple samples here, not boosting a kick drum 3db.

replaygain for wave files

Reply #6 –
Guys don't confuse the original poster with technobabble.

The question was whether replaygaining a wave file will have any effect on its quality. The answer is no, and if anything you might loose really quiet information to the noise floor. Use it to "normalize" tracks for mix albums. Just don't turn the gain up without resampling to 24-bit first, or you'll probably introduce clipping.
 

replaygain for wave files

Reply #7 –
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Except any clipping introduced by MP3 encoding is more than likely to be more or less inaudible.  We're talking only a couple samples here, not boosting a kick drum 3db.

People have ABXed it though - see http://www.ff123.net/ for details.


If you don't want to make all your tracks or albums a similar loudness, then there is absolutely no reason to use ReplayGain on a .wav file!


Xenion:

In your example, the resulting of dropping a -100dB signal by a further 11dB depends on the bitdepth of the file, and the dither and noise shaping parameters.

With a 24-bit file the -111dB signal will still be there. With a 16-bit file, you could choose noise shaping options to maintain information 120dB down if you wanted to - in fact standard dither will keep your -111dB sine wave above the noise floor because the dB levels for noise and tones aren't equivalent, hence -111dB tone is audible (and visible on a spectrogram) even when covered with -90dB noise.

Cheers,
David.