Replaygain Reference Loudness

2017-01-05 03:27:20

Greetings and Happy New Year!

I ripped all my CDs years ago using EAC with REACT in FLAC format and during the process Replaygain (RG) was included in the ripping process. One of the tags for the RG process is Reference Loudness (RL), 89dB . When using Foobar2000 for RG, the RL is not tagged. Isn't the RL required in order for RG to work properly? Any and all info on this is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Replaygain Reference Loudness

Reply #1 – 2017-01-05 04:37:36

replay gain uses 89 dB as the reference loudness:

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain#Target_loudness

Re: Replaygain Reference Loudness

Reply #2 – 2017-01-05 05:40:07

The reference level is only required when creating the ReplayGain tag.    It might be nice to know but It's not used for playback because the "tagged" ReplayGain value is going to be applied.   For example, if the RG value is -6dB, the level will be adjusted by -6dB, no matter what reference level was used.

Re: Replaygain Reference Loudness

Reply #3 – 2017-01-05 06:27:38

Thanks guys.
So what I'm gathering from your replies is the fact that my FLAC files that were RG scanned with foobar2000 do not show the Reference Loudness tag, it is by default set at 89dB. Again, the FLAC files ripped using REACT show the RL tag, which is 89dB. It just seems strange that the REACT ripped files show the RL tag and the foobar2000 scanned files do not. Is it because the REACT ripped CDs were RG scanned at the WAV level?

Re: Replaygain Reference Loudness

Reply #4 – 2017-01-05 07:27:51

It seems doing ReplayGain scanning with FLAC frontend (flac.exe) writes the unnecessary tag into the file. It should not be there as the reference level is part of the standard and must not be changed.

Re: Replaygain Reference Loudness

Reply #5 – 2017-01-05 19:22:08

On the very beginnings of replaygain, the intended target gain was 83dBspl. (K20 in musepack). This was in accordance of standards set for video films.
In practice, that level was felt as too quiet most of the time, and maybe only really usable with classical music.
As such the reference level was upped to 89dBspl (K14) and has been kept at that.

Recently, with the appearence of the EBU standard, replaygain standard was revised to version 2.0, and some questions arised about the reference level (since the EBU reference is, again, different than the 89dBspl of replaygain), but it was determined that the replaygain values should still conform to the existing standard. If one wanted to use the EBU reference, then, a different tag would be needed, or the player should know how to adapt from the difference.

So, the usage of the tag is wrong, as it would be merely informative and shoud not be interpreted at all.