What I don’t fully understand is with step 2 is what would happen if you left the RG drop down box set to NONE before you apply the step 3 and perform the replaygain scan. In other words, does the RG box settings only have an effect on the playback properties after the scan has been applied.
Also does the replaygain scanner get its readings from the “Playback settings” I keep as the default i.e., the -8db and 0db or is that purely just for the internal playback through Foobar and has nothing to do with the new file settings that are produced by the replaygain scanner.

1.   I load the album tracks that I want to burn into Foobar and obviously do a lot of listening beforehand through headphones to identify any errors etc (with the RG box set to NONE)
2.   Next, I go into the drop-down box RG setting, and select TRACK and then apply gain and prevent clipping acc to peak
3.   Then I (highlight/select all tracks) and scan per file track gain

I might add that I use CDBurner Xp and toggle the settings there to accept reply gain by track before I burn a cd

Are you certain your tracks have RG tags?  Add these columns into your playlist and you'll see the values:

Track Gain = [%replaygain_track_gain%]
Album Gain = [%replaygain_album_gain%]

When you convert the playlist using "Write Audio CD", how are you setting the "ReplayGain Processing" options?

Quote from: Zappa1954 on 2022-04-24 06:17:34

What I don’t fully understand is with step 2 is what would happen if you left the RG drop down box set to NONE before you apply the step 3 and perform the replaygain scan. In other words, does the RG box settings only have an effect on the playback properties after the scan has been applied.
Also does the replaygain scanner get its readings from the “Playback settings” I keep as the default i.e., the -8db and 0db or is that purely just for the internal playback through Foobar and has nothing to do with the new file settings that are produced by the replaygain scanner.

I'm no expert but to my understanding both the options you mention only effect playback. The scanning process has nothing to do with these options. (Which you could verify by scanning again and noting the values with the options on/off - 'Track Gain' values would be the same)  This has been very helpful as Foobar's explanation about Replay gain is so outdated and is not very well presented and this information you have provided confirms my suspicions

In my experience when using Track Gain (Source mode: Track) with a mix of tracks from different mastered sources, sometimes a really quiet track will just get boosted a little too much comparatively. Especially when played alongside louder tracks that have compressed dynamics (due to "loudness wars"). I'm not sure if this is what you're experiencing.  This has also been valuable info- and yes I have also noticed that too- for example on Abbey Rd - The Beatles- "Her Majesty" which was supposed to be relatively low  ( just Paul and an acoustic guitar and vocal-gets boosted way to high and I often wandered how to reduce just this one track

I'm sure someone else can explain in more (correct) technical terms.

Just to note for the occasional problematic track, you can always modify the 'Track Gain' value in right-click track > Properties > ReplayGain tab to compensate. If you feel a track is too loud relative to others, subtract a few dB and listen again.

Quote

1.   I load the album tracks that I want to burn into Foobar and obviously do a lot of listening beforehand through headphones to identify any errors etc (with the RG box set to NONE)
2.   Next, I go into the drop-down box RG setting, and select TRACK and then apply gain and prevent clipping acc to peak
3.   Then I (highlight/select all tracks) and scan per file track gain

(The order of 2 and 3 makes no difference)  This is also very helpful information Thank you

Hopefully you also do some listening with RG on to compare relative track levels, before you burn a CD (save the plastic)
Yes - always but am still wasting too many burned cds that have one or two tracks that are too low

Quote

I might add that I use CDBurner Xp and toggle the settings there to accept reply gain by track before I burn a cd

No idea about this program. (I suppose if the relative track levels are similar to what you hear in Foobar with RG on, then it works?)

The settings I use
Settings Replaygain Scanner:  analyse loudness using EBU R128 selected
Down sample and True peak scan I have left blank, as I don’t fully understand what they do 

I would also add that mostly I tend to save audio files as lossless flac and would have each of them
saved as -1.db using Audacity

If you set it to "album" gain, it will use the album gain tag if that one exists - and otherwise fallback to track gain. So if you have e.g. various artist compilations you want to be played back each track of its own, then you can scan as individual tracks. (If you already scanned as albums, you can just remove the album gain and album peak tags.)

To search up those tracks that have or do not have a certain tag, the query syntax is e.g. %replaygain_track_gain% PRESENT or  %replaygain_track_peak% MISSING or whatever tag you want to query about.

Thanks again useful to know

Quote from: Zappa1954 on 2022-04-24 06:17:34

The settings I use
Settings Replaygain Scanner:  analyse loudness using EBU R128 selected
Down sample and True peak scan I have left blank, as I don’t fully understand what they do 

Downsample: if there is, say, a 352/24 file, the RG scanner can disregard everything above 20 kHz, as you cannot hear that anyway. (If there is a lot of ultrasonic content, then ... poor speakers!)
True peak: if your DAC oversamples, you should probably use that to avoid clipping. Very rarely you will have potential issues anyway, but using true peak scan doesn't hurt anything but the time taken to do the scanning.
Also useful info- Thanks

Quote from: Zappa1954 on 2022-04-24 06:17:34

I would also add that mostly I tend to save audio files as lossless flac and would have each of them
saved as -1.db using Audacity

Those are the ones you process?  Yes all my files are edited using Audacity as my DAW and I always set volume amplification as a final process to -1db- if there is any clipping which Audacity can detect

(Unless you intend to do any EQ processing or that kind, you might keep them out of Audacity.)   Some of my audio files do have EQ added but I tend to use EQ sporadically now anyway

As for CD burning, I do not know whether your can be set to apply the RG values to the content. If not, then those are tags only, and burning an audio CD will only write an audio stream, not the RG tags. RG is supposed to be a losslessly reversible operation, that is why it is in tags and does not alter the file content - rather it just instructs the player to do volume shifts on every playback. Thanks- Well as I have stated I just select the option to Track Gain within CDBurner XP and let the programme do the rest-  (it has always worked for me so I know that it can handle RG as well-  the programme website also states : support for ReplayGain:  see here  : https://cdburnerxp.se/help/kb/7   and also support for CD-Text

The programme may well be very old now, but I have been using it for several years as it's so reliable as a burner- & rarely had any cd errors using this program. I always  convert my stuff to 16bit files (and dither if necessary from 24bit- by the way)   Once again, thanks for your valuable input

I'm not sure what you mean by "Write Audio CD" as I do not use Foobar to do this, but instead use cdBurner Xp which gives you the option to turn on "replaygain" values prior to burning the cd. In that software, you can select Track gain or album gain or NONE as the three default options before burning

If you do not intend to alter EQ or anything, and are happy with how the volume comes out of the RG scanning, there is no need to put them through Audacity. Extra work and irreversibly changes your files.

Quote from: Zappa1954 on 2022-04-25 02:42:40

I'm not sure what you mean by "Write Audio CD" as I do not use Foobar to do this, but instead use cdBurner Xp which gives you the option to turn on "replaygain" values prior to burning the cd. In that software, you can select Track gain or album gain or NONE as the three default options before burning

I'm familiar with CDBurnerXP and what you describe should work. Use Track Gain. You might try the foobar2000 CD burner component to see if you get a better result.