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Topic: How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000 (Read 14477 times) previous topic - next topic
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How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Hi, i read some information about replaygain and from what i understand it does not 'affect the audio data in anyway' so you wont damage your audio file.
Question: Is this true?
What is a proper way of handling this without messing up your actual songs.
Some albums are way louder then others, some are not.
I currently use the pre-amp Without RG info 7.2, and for those with it, wich i currently tested (1) i've set that preamp With RG info too 0.
I tested (1) album with "Scan Selection As Single Album" then update the file tags. Everything song in that album sounded louder. But i did not want to contiune to do this to all my albums that are low in volume in case this hurts them?

If i select all my albums even the loud and low ones, and used Scan Selection As Albums(by tags) is that a good idea? Or should that be Scan Selection As Single Album. As you can tell i'm highly unaware what i'm doing.

Oh, If were to scan all my albums with replaygain at 1 time, instead of individually would that be better then what i poster in bold?

note: if i do not reply quick i'm sorry, i'm gonna get some sleep and check back tomorrow.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Paws on
Question: Is this true?

Yes. It only adds tags to the files... there is no other effect on the file other than the tags added.
Quote from: Paws on
What is a proper way of handling this without messing up your actual songs.

As mentioned in the wiki and elsewhere, songs aren't messed up unless you choose the "APPLY GAIN TO FILE" option.
Quote from: Paws on
I currently use the pre-amp Without RG info 7.2, and for those with it, wich i currently tested (1) i've set that preamp With RG info too 0.
I tested (1) album with "Scan Selection As Single Album" then update the file tags. Everything song in that album sounded louder. But i did not want to contiune to do this to all my albums that are low in volume in case this hurts them?

Don't use preamp unless you have a specific reason to do so. Use either track gain (if you mostly listen to random songs from multiple albums) or album gain (if you mostly listen to albums in their entirety).
Quote from: Paws on
If i select all my albums even the loud and low ones, and used Scan Selection As Albums(by tags) is that a good idea? Or should that be Scan Selection As Single Album. As you can tell i'm highly unaware what i'm doing.

Let's say you have 3 albums:
Pink Floyd's Dark side of the moon
Led Zeppelin's IV
and Deep Purple's Machine head
if you choose the "scan selection by albums (by tags)" option, the scanner recognizes that you have 3 different album and computes different album gain values for each album.
if you choose the second option, the scanner treats all files as a single album, so you'll have the same album gain value for all three albums. Clearly, this option is not useful in this case... it was meant to be used in casees where you have a bunch of files which you want to treat as an album (say you're making a mixtape).
Quote from: Paws on
Oh, If were to scan all my albums with replaygain at 1 time, instead of individually would that be better then what i poster in bold?

how many files do you have in your collection, and how fast is your computer. It might be best to just scan all files overnight.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #2 –
If you need to better understand replay gain, the best place to go is:
http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/index.html

The difference between "Scan Selection As Albums(by tags)" and "Scan Selection As Single Album" is how foobar calculates the album gain from the selected files.

If you're tracks are properly tagged, "Scan Selection As Albums(by tags)" is what you are going to want to use.

If they're not properly tagged, you should select individual albums at a time and use "Scan Selection As Single Album"
elevatorladylevitateme

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #3 –
Thanks, kanak and shakey_snake really appericate it.
All my files are properly tagged. I have 1668 files. A lot of my albums are lossless for some being rare, or hard to find etc...

shakey_snake
Quote
If you're tracks are properly tagged, "Scan Selection As Albums(by tags)" is what you are going to want to use.

So this is the option i'm going to use then.

kanak
Quote
As mentioned in the wiki and elsewhere, songs aren't messed up unless you choose the "APPLY GAIN TO FILE" option
.
I do not see that option anywhere.

kanak
Quote
Don't use preamp unless you have a specific reason to do so. Use either track gain (if you mostly listen to random songs from multiple albums) or album gain (if you mostly listen to albums in their entirety).

Oh, i have found this site, which i should have posted in my first post and is where i got the ideas i came up with, here http://www.bobulous.org.uk/misc/Replay-Gain.html
Again thanks for taking some time out and helping me out, and if you get a chance and read this post is, Scan Selection As Albums(by tags) good for lossless, and lossy loud and low? I know i stated this is what i'm going to do just want to be for sure.
Oh, and what about cuesheets, can they be used for RG info too? Thanks.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Paws on
shakey_snake
Quote
If you're tracks are properly tagged, "Scan Selection As Albums(by tags)" is what you are going to want to use.

So this is the option i'm going to use then.


Just one caveat!
If you have a "various artists" album remember to have "VA" or sth. like that in the "Album Artist" Tag!
The reason is that foobar thinks that you have several albums with the same name but different artists if you do not -- which is useful if you have several albums with title "Best Of" but from different artists, but not-so-useful for VA albums "Best of Rock" or sth. like that.
I had several Albums with 20 different "Album Gains" until I found out how to circumvent that (instead of using "Scan AS album" - but that's impractical if you want to Replaygain 50 albums at once )

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #5 –
Engywuck, thanks i forgot about the Various Artists Cd. Would having different years affect the "Scan Selection As Albums(by tags)"
i.e.
Bad Company
10 From 6
It's a best of kinda deal and each track has a different year, and i have other cd's that have best of, or greatest hits kinda thing and different tracks have different years.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #6 –
By default yes, but you can change the grouping pattern in Preferences -> Advanced -> ReplayGain. You can just remove %date% to have it ignore the years.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #7 –
To spare yourself the effort of paying attention of the tags, you can also use the optional "Scan Selection As Albums (by directories)" command, which can be added at Preferences, Display, Context menu.

This of course assumes your albums are arranged in folders (one folder = one album).

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #8 –
Thanks Frank Bicking, thats a good idea since thats how i keep my music.
Thanks Purple Monkey, removing %date% in my sort  incomming files finally displays my music to how i like.
thanks guys..Now for hours of waiting for RG to get done

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Paws on
Quote
As mentioned in the wiki and elsewhere, songs aren't messed up unless you choose the "APPLY GAIN TO FILE" option
.
I do not see that option anywhere.

This option is only available for filetypes that support it. Like MP3, for example. You mentioned that you have some albums in a lossless format. FLAC (as one example for a lossless codec) doesn't support changing the files, so the option is not available.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #10 –
Thanks,Olaf101.

What about using dither? in foobar is this something that i should use. Since my sound card is fixed at 16 bits? And if so, does dithering your audio damage or change your actual song quality?

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #11 –
Dithering will improve sound quality by minimizing quantization errors on lossy decoded output and also on losslessly decoded output if having any kind of DSP enabled, including ReplayGain and volume-control. However, dithering, or actually most notably the hard noise-shaping, takes alot of CPU power and it only affects the least significant bit, so on normal music listening with 16 bit output, then you will not be able to hear the difference between dithered and un-dithered i.e. just rounded or truncated output and hence, that's why it isn't enabled by default in fb2k.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #12 –
Hi!
I reaf this on the hydrogenaudio wiki:
Quote
* All other formats are supported but the Replay Gain values are saved to the foobar2000 database.

* You can also choose to only have the Replay Gain values saved in the foobar2000 database and leave the files untouched.


But How can I use the foobar2000 database? I didn't find any option. I only found options to scan or edit manually, but I couldn't choose that where the RG info was saved.  And if I wnted to use RG with a .wav i couldn't. I got this error message:

Quote
Could not update tags (Unsupported format or corrupted file)

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #13 –
That information is outdated, there is no such database anymore.

Convert your WAV files into a lossless format like FLAC or WavPack in order to store tags.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #14 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
That information is outdated, there is no such database anymore.

Convert your WAV files into a lossless format like FLAC or WavPack in order to store tags.

It died out with 0.8.3? Too bad, it seemed it could be useful.

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #15 –
Instead of making a new topic, I'll just add my question here.

So, is there anyway to store the RG info anywhere else, but not the files? I want my files totally unchanged (= they must not lose their md5sum.).

How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
To spare yourself the effort of paying attention of the tags, you can also use the optional "Scan Selection As Albums (by directories)" command, which can be added at Preferences, Display, Context menu.

This of course assumes your albums are arranged in folders (one folder = one album).

Digging up this thread that I found while googling... this is the solution I was looking for! 
Thanks dear homonym and fellow HD600 lover! 

Franck

Re: How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #17 –
I need -14LUFS because I want same level as Spotify. Am I correct in setting with RG preamp to +4dB?

Re: How To Properly Use Replaygain With Foobar2000

Reply #18 –
Yes. The ReplayGain target level is -18 LUFS and 1 unit of LUFS is equal to 1 dB.