How To Use Mp3 Gain ?, 3 guides - normalization - maximizing Options

[user]

Last update:
2004-08-16


Thanks to westgroveg, we have a brief summary of today's possibilities:

This thread is always coming backup so here a few extra hints for users

• Album analyses  calculates track/album values so performing an album analyses is all you need to do.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• MP3Gain now supports writing changes to ID3 tag so it is 100% lossless, ie. completely reversible.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• As of LAME 3.96 (track) replaygain values are automatically written to the lame tag,
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Unlike MP3Gain, values stored in the lame tag need to be applied during playback which requires more CPU processing & the decoder to be aware.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Foobar can automatically scan & adjust replaygain values without any need for MP3Gain but of course some of us don’t like this audio player.
  
  
  
  
  
• One more thing, make sure, you tag before using replaygain or instead of your replaygain values being hidden they appear in the comment field for some reason which can be annoying.

This post has been edited by user: Aug 20 2004, 11:33

[Joelman]

I'm brand new to this forum, and I hope I'm not repetitive. I apoligize do repeat a question.

I use a 4G ipod, 40Gb which is already loded with tons of my songs (about 70% full). As I understand it, in order to acheive "normalized" volume among my tunes, I ought to run MP3 gain at 89Db on album gain, to maintain the dynamics of each album (Jebus, 6/03). That's fine.

Now, I have all my songs in iTunes and before I discovered the MP3 Gain Program I would adjust the iTunes volume slider for each album, attempting to bring all of my albums to similar levels. Once I run MP3 Gain as described above, should I #1)wipe my iPod and reload it with the newly MP3gained tracks, and/or #2) can I select all of my albums and reset the volume slider to default and have my tracks all be pleasing in volume?

As you can likely tell, I'm not too savvy on the ins and outs of audio. I just don't want to have to leap for the volume on my stereo after every track.

Thanks in advance, and thanks to all who posted in the past. Its all been very informative.

[Otto42]

Now, I have all my songs in iTunes and before I discovered the MP3 Gain Program I would adjust the iTunes volume slider for each album, attempting to bring all of my albums to similar levels.

Just out of curiousity, why not enable SoundCheck? That's what it's designed to do. It's not quite as good as ReplayGain, but it's not bad, in my experience.

Once I run MP3 Gain as described above, should I #1)wipe my iPod and reload it with the newly MP3gained tracks, and/or #2) can I select all of my albums and reset the volume slider to default and have my tracks all be pleasing in volume?

Ideally, you will want to remove the tracks from the iTunes library, make sure none of them have the iTunNorm comment tag in them, and readd them to the iTunes library. This ensures that the new, adjusted volume, will be scanned correctly by the iTunes SoundCheck routine, and that the level adjustments won't be ridiculously off if you happen to enable SoundCheck at some future point.

Of course, clearing the iTunes library and re-importing your music will mean the loss of Playcounts, Last Played time, and Rating information. You can use this little script I wrote to save/restore this information from/to iTunes: http://otto.homedns.org:8888/itunes/SaveRatings.zip

Or just use foo_pod instead. It'll convert ReplayGain information from foobar 2000 into correct SoundCheck information on the iPod, without the need to use MP3Gain to modify the actual files.

This post has been edited by Otto42: Aug 11 2004, 15:38