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Topic: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized (Read 577 times) previous topic - next topic
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Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

In MusicBrainz Picard, i have set the replay gain tags (by album) for my collection, here are the parameters, i have used:
  • target level: -23
  • True peak
  • Max peak: -1
  • Clipping protection: always
In MPD, i have enabled replay gain and set it to use album tags.
So, in theory, everything is perfect, in practice, however, Taylor Swift is loud and classical music is quiet.

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #1 –
My alsa setup:
pcm.softvol {
    type            softvol
    slave {
        pcm         "hw:DAC"
    }
    control {
        name        "SMSL SU-8 Playback Volume"
        card        0
    }
}

pcm.!default {
    type             plug
    slave.pcm       "softvol"
    slave.rate "unchanged"
}

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #2 –
If you look at track gain for those tracks, they match what you expect: flute+piano are to be corrected only -5.00 dB (=track already is quite silen), while Taylor Swift needs a whopping -12.81 dB reduction (=track is loud).

Only if you look at the whole albums, which must use the loudest track's correction for the whole album in order to preserve inter-track volume differences, the classical album seems to have a louder finale section. That is not surprising, given that classical music tends to have a huge dynamic range (=loudness differences) within an album.

To test this hypothesis, try setting MPD to applying track gain. Now the classical track should sound much closer in volume to Taylor Swift. Applying "Album gain" only makes sense when listening to albums continuously. For most other situations (e.g. shuffling playlists), track gain brings you closer to your goal of maintaining a constant listening volume.

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #3 –
my mpd config
#music_directory                "/music"
#playlist_directory             "/playlists"
#db_file                        "/db"
# General music daemon options ################################################
user                            "root"
group                           "root"
###############################################################################
# Input #######################################################################
input {
        plugin "curl"
}
###############################################################################
# Audio Output ################################################################
audio_output {
        type                 "alsa"
        name               "default"
        mixer_control      "SMSL SU-8"
        replay_gain_handler    "software"
}
###############################################################################
# Normalization automatic volume adjustments ##################################
replaygain                      "album"
replaygain_preamp               "0"
###############################################################################

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #4 –
Quote from: ojdo on
Only if you look at the whole albums, which must use the loudest track's correction for the whole album in order to preserve inter-track volume differences, the classical album seems to have a louder finale section. That is not surprising, given that classical music tends to have a huge dynamic range (=loudness differences) within an album.

Thanks, i will try this. However, the courious thing is: the classical music album is just a solo flute + piano, it does not have really load sections, which would make this much album gain nececery.

I usually listen to whole albums, so i thought the album mode made sense

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #5 –
Is it possible, that my tagsa are wrong? On this classical album, the highest attenuation is -6.54, the rest is around -2. In closer inspection, i do not understand this album gain.......

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #6 –
I have asked foobar to calculate replagain tags, and it came up with +0.66 for the classical music and -8.31 album gain values and +0.05 and -7.81 track gains respectively.
It seems to me that, picard's replaygain 2.0 plugin calculated wrong values somehow....

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #7 –
Quote from: rzsolti on
I usually listen to whole albums, so i thought the album mode made sense
That's as may be, but then all the tracks get adjusted by the same amount and therefore there will be quiet tracks and loud ones.  If you want to "normalise" all the tracks, use per-track ReplayGain.
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #8 –
Okay, so, definitely, my tags were wrong. I don't know what is the difference between Picard's replaygain plugin and and foobar's, but there is something.
With foobar, everything is working as intended.

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #9 –
Quote from: rzsolti on
Thanks, i will try this. However, the courious thing is: the classical music album is just a solo flute + piano, it does not have really load sections, which would make this much album gain nececery.
And specifically, which album is it? (artist, title)

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #10 –
The albums I have included here are: Taylor Swift: the tortured poet department and Emmanuel Pahud, Éric le Sage: Mozart stories
 

Re: Replay gain not working properly, audio levels are not norlamized

Reply #11 –
Quote from: rzsolti on
The albums I have included here are: Taylor Swift: the tortured poet department and Emmanuel Pahud, Éric le Sage: Mozart stories
On the album Mozart stories, with the latest Picard 2.11 and rsgain 3.5, and the settings like below, I get album gain -4.39 dB. With the default target (-18 LUFS) I get -0.8 dB and with the default max peak (0 dB) I get +0.2 dB. That's similar to foobar.