[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
ezkcdude Wrote: ...I am using MP3Gain to make the adjustements... I used MP3Gain a few months ago and it modified the audio instead of just using tags which leaves you with no options to enable/disable at will. It does create tags so you can roll-back the changes which is what I've done with my files. I recommend using foobar to create replaygain tags which the SB will read. I have the smart gain feature turned on and I appreciate the relatively constant volume between tracks from different albums. Even more so when going directly from the Benchmark DAC1 to my amps because its a hassle to adjust the volume (no remote). -- zooropa320 2 Channel Setup: SB3 * Benchmark DAC1 * Classé Audio DR-15 mono blocks * Magnepan MG 3.5Rs * REL Strata III Music Server: Lian-Li PC-V2000B Case * Turbo-Cool 510 XE Power Supply * Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Motherboard * 3Ware 9500S-8 SATA RAID Card * 2 AMD Opteron 240 1.4GHz CPUs * 2 512MB PC3200 Corsair CAS 3 DRAMs * 8 250GB SATA Hitachi drives in RAID 5 http://www.last.fm/user/zooropa320/ zooropa320's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3420 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
zooropa320 Wrote: I used MP3Gain a few months ago and it modified the audio instead of just using tags which leaves you with no options to enable/disable at will. It does create tags so you can roll-back the changes which is what I've done with my files. I recommend using foobar to create replaygain tags which the SB will read. I have the smart gain feature turned on and I appreciate the relatively constant volume between tracks from different albums. Even more so when going directly from the Benchmark DAC1 to my amps because its a hassle to adjust the volume (no remote). Thanks! I'm going to try this. -- ezkcdude SB3-Derek Shek TDA1543/CS8412 NOS DAC-MIT Terminator 2 interconnects-Endler Audio 24-step Attenuators (RCA-direct)-Parasound Halo A23 125W/ch amplifier-Speltz anti-cables-DIY 2-ways + Dayton Titanic 10 subwoofer He's not hi-fi, he's my stereo. ezkcdude's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2545 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
ezkcdude Wrote: I am using MP3Gain to make the adjustements, and wonder whether I should set the Target volume to a high (100 dB) or low (90 dB). The main issue I see is clipping. As was discussed in another thread, many of the CD's nowadays are so loud (100 dB), that it would seem that you need to have a replaygain that is even higher, just to prevent clipping of these CD's. So, I'm leaning towards the higher level of gain, which will prevent clipping of these CD's and just raise the level of the quiter CD's. Does this make sense? I'm not sure I understand your question... but I'll take a stab. I beleive the clipping you mention is only an issue for lossy files (e.g. MP3's) and is introduced during transcoding. This type of clipping can be adressed by =lowering= the ovrerall gain of the album or individual tracks. Lossless file formats (e.g. FLAC) never clip (AFAIK)... unless the source was clipped originally. If the source had clipping (due to poor loud compressed mastering) you are out of luck. Adjusting gain won't do anything but adjust the percieved volume it cannot repair or replace missing information. Also... I'm not certain if MP3Gain uses Replaygain tags at all, or if it actually modifies the MP3 file(?) Can't remember... but I don't think it's a good idea to use both. -- Yannzola Yannzola's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=874 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Back to something mentioned higher up this thread. What do people think of a SmartII replay gain mode - which only uses track gain and if it detects multiple tracks from an album it defaults to 0db. My ideal (from an audiophile point of view) would be to use track gain when playing a random mix and 0 db all other times. However having looked at the server code this is harder to achieve - so is the suggestion above useful? If so can someone raise an enhancement request and note it here?? -- Triode Triode's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
What would be nice is a plugin that could do the ReplayGain algorithm on-the-fly, without changing the actual file. -- ezkcdude SB3-Derek Shek TDA1543/CS8412 NOS DAC-MIT Terminator 2 interconnects-Endler Audio 24-step Attenuators (RCA-direct)-Parasound Halo A23 125W/ch amplifier-Speltz anti-cables-DIY 2-ways + Dayton Titanic 10 subwoofer He's not hi-fi, he's my stereo. ezkcdude's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2545 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
ezkcdude wrote: What would be nice is a plugin that could do the ReplayGain algorithm on-the-fly, without changing the actual file. That would take too long to compute - it involves scanning the whole file. R. ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Robin Bowes Wrote: ezkcdude wrote: What would be nice is a plugin that could do the ReplayGain algorithm on-the-fly, without changing the actual file. That would take too long to compute - it involves scanning the whole file. R. That only takes a few seconds on my computer, but maybe it could work in the background, for example, on just the current playlist? Anyway, just a thought. -- ezkcdude SB3-Derek Shek TDA1543/CS8412 NOS DAC-MIT Terminator 2 interconnects-Endler Audio 24-step Attenuators (RCA-direct)-Parasound Halo A23 125W/ch amplifier-Speltz anti-cables-DIY 2-ways + Dayton Titanic 10 subwoofer He's not hi-fi, he's my stereo. ezkcdude's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2545 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
I know it's been a while since this thread was active, but now that I'm using MusicMagic practically 100% of the time, it's getting frustrating to keep adjusting volume so often. I haven't been using the ReplayGain, but I'm now thinking about enabling it. I am using MP3Gain to make the adjustements, and wonder whether I should set the Target volume to a high (100 dB) or low (90 dB). The main issue I see is clipping. As was discussed in another thread, many of the CD's nowadays are so loud (100 dB), that it would seem that you need to have a replaygain that is even higher, just to prevent clipping of these CD's. So, I'm leaning towards the higher level of gain, which will prevent clipping of these CD's and just raise the level of the quiter CD's. Does this make sense? -- ezkcdude SB3-Derek Shek TDA1543/CS8412 NOS DAC-MIT Terminator 2 interconnects-Endler Audio 24-step Attenuators (RCA-direct)-Parasound Halo A23 125W/ch amplifier-Speltz anti-cables-DIY 2-ways + Dayton Titanic 10 subwoofer He's not hi-fi, he's my stereo. ezkcdude's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2545 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
I ripped a load of CD's recently from eac to flac, I used --replaygain-accurate, the result? well on at least 1 CD (Undertow, from TOOL) is awful, cymbals etc are atrocious, and its horrible to listen to. I had smartgain on, then tried track gain and it was the same, turned it off and restarted the sb3 and it was better. I the also turned off the bit limiting feature, which I thought was only used when transcoding to mp3, and the quality changed even more (for the better), so I guess this was really my problem -- mp101 mp101's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3275 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
mp101 Wrote: I ripped a load of CD's recently from eac to flac, I used --replaygain-accurate, the result? well on at least 1 CD (Undertow, from TOOL) is awful, cymbals etc are atrocious, and its horrible to listen to. I had smartgain on, then tried track gain and it was the same, turned it off and restarted the sb3 and it was better. I the also turned off the bit limiting feature, which I thought was only used when transcoding to mp3, and the quality changed even more (for the better), so I guess this was really my problem Yes it was, If you use bit rate limiting then it is converted to mp3 on the fly. You thinking the cymbals sounded atrocious should have been a big enough clue that you were listening to mp3's ;-) Craig -- Craig Craig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=96 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Yann I discovered yesterday that if you set your album gain tag to +0.001 dB then Slimserver rounds it down to 0.00 dB and seems to use it reliably, Unfortunately Foobar seems to round it down before it saves it, I'm not sure about other taggers, I used JRiver Media Center to do mine. Craig -- Craig Craig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=96 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
jimmy Wrote: Does SS use both the gain and the peak? I want to set the album related tags so that when I play the whole album, the volume levels are exactly the same as the original CD. So, I presume I set gain to 0db but what about the peak? To 1? Or do I not set it all? Or can I delete it? Jimmy Jimmy, As far as I know, if your goal is no change to gain from original source you can safetly delete album_peak tags... and you +should+ be able to set the album_gain to 0 dB. Unfortunately, as currently implemented, this doesn't work as you'd expect. If you set your album_gain to 0, +0, 0.00, etc. Slimserver logic currently considers this as undefined and defaults to track_gain which is a very bad thing! Please vote for my bug http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2793. For a quick fix, you can do what I'm doing... delete album_peak tags entirely, and set your album_gain tags to +0.01. Not quite zero (so Slimserver reads it) but pretty close. y. -- Yannzola Yannzola's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=874 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Craig Wrote: I made a suggestion a while back, that the preamp gain control should have positive values too, that way you could offset the reduction in level caused by replay gain and get the output level that you want. Which in my case would be comparable with my CD player. Craig I didn't realize you couldn't already do this... I'd vote for it if you entered it as a feature request. -- Yannzola Yannzola's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=874 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Craig Wrote: ok, I'll do it but how do you enter an enhancement request? Craig Same as a bug. Only you mark the Severity as enhancement. http://bugs.slimdevices.com/ -- Yannzola Yannzola's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=874 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
ok, I'll do it but how do you enter an enhancement request? Craig -- Craig Craig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=96 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Done http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2801 Vote away Craig -- Craig Craig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=96 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
^^^ I take it I can do this with track gain as well? -- Mike Anderson 'FREE RADICAL RADIO!' (http://nvo.com/cd) Hours of free radical MP3s. Mike Anderson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1705 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Yannzola, I agree that if you you set the album gain to 0db then it doesn't show up in the web UI and doesn't get used, However I set The Wall to -0.10 dB and it get's picked up. I'll vote for your bug. What's got me thinking about this again is that recent builds of Slimserver have started reading J River Media centre gain tags so I don't need to process my flac's with Foobar anymore, Unfortunately MediaCentre calculates Album Gain on the fly and doesn't place it in the tags. This is where the fall back to using track gain is causing a problem. Craig -- Craig Craig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=96 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Yannzola Wrote: Mike, Personally I use Foobar2000 but probably any program that allows custom mass tagging would work. In Foobar2000, there is an option to manually set levels... simply select all the files you want to adjust, make certain to leave track gain fields alone and set album gain to 0 dB. Actually, what I want to do is this: Instead of having replaygain normalize everything to 89db, I'd like to have it normalize everything to 99 db. Is there some way I can do this with foobar or any other program? -- Mike Anderson 'FREE RADICAL RADIO!' (http://nvo.com/cd) Hours of free radical MP3s. Mike Anderson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1705 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Craig Wrote: I was thinking about changing all my Album gain tags to 0db to see what happens - I'll let you know. As far as I can see, SS or maybe the SmartGain routine seems to fall back to track gain in the absence of Album gain tags which is even worse if you have a very dynamic album, Pink Floyds The Wall has 24db variation in track gains so playing the album with those adjustments could hardly be called Hi Fi Craig Craig, I did some testing on my side with the latest 6.2.2 daily and it looks like SmartGain does indeed revert to Track-Gain if Album-Gain is set to 0dB or +0dB. As far as I'm concerned this is a bug. Which I've posted here: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2793 -- Yannzola Yannzola's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=874 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Craig Wrote: I was thinking about changing all my Album gain tags to 0db to see what happens - I'll let you know. How does one do this? -- Mike Anderson 'FREE RADICAL RADIO!' (http://nvo.com/cd) Hours of free radical MP3s. Mike Anderson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1705 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Mike Anderson Wrote: How does one do this? Mike, Personally I use either Foobar2000 probably any program that allows custom mass tagging would work. In Foobar2000, there is an option to manually set levels. -- Yannzola Yannzola's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=874 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
I'm using 6.2.1. A lot of the tracks seem to have over 6dB of gain reduction. Anyway, I've turned it off for now and am very happy with the sound quality. Thanks Andrew -- Andrew B. = SB3- Benchmark DAC1 - EAR864 valve pre - ATC SCM50ASL active speakers... nice! Andrew B.'s Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2619 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Try the 6.2 nightly - the volume control bug is fixed, so it would be good to know replay gain works too. -- Patrick Dixon www.at-tunes.co.uk Patrick Dixon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=90 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
I was thinking about this too the other day, what do you think about having a new replay gain mode, similar to Smart but which doesn't use replay gain on albums? That way you'd get replay gain when playing random (which is when you need it most) but if you play an album you get it full whack - just the same as if you were playing the cd. Of couse this could be achieved by setting all your album gain tags to 0db while leaving track gain tags as they are. Craig -- Craig Craig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=96 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
What SS version are you using? Some versions of the SB volume control, used 16 bit sub-integer divisors and created rounding of 16 bit audio. This was audiable to me and some others (but apparently not everyone!). The latest nightlies don't do this, but only with gains of more than -30dB. Replay gain uses the same volume control routines. What replay gain adjustments are being applied to the tracks you notice the problem on? -- Patrick Dixon www.at-tunes.co.uk Patrick Dixon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=90 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Replaygain affecting sound quality?
Replay gain does not affect sound quality in any way. You might get this impression because replay gain levels out the volume at a considerably lower volume (89db default?) than most of today's recordings. Especially pop recordings seem to be pushed to the absolute limit. If you look at the replay gain tags you will see that most of them have values well below 0. To be able to reliably compare playback with and without replay gain you have to listen to them at the exact same db level (speaker output, that is). Without a db meter this is hard to accomplish. In any case, you will almost always have to turn up the volume if you use replay gain. s. -- slimpy slimpy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1524 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
