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Topic: mp3gain drawbacks? (Read 19916 times) previous topic - next topic
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mp3gain drawbacks?

Reply #25 –
I, for one, am very grateful to Snelg for having included an easy way to change the default 89 dB volume to something more "reasonable".

Now, don't get me wrong, I think that 89 dB is perfectly fine for Hi-Fi setups or computers, but it's also woefully inadequate for iPods recently bought in the European Union.

The incredibly stupid volume cap mandated by Law in the EU makes all your mp3 files replaygained to 89 dB absolutely inaudible in noisy areas (busy streets with a lot of traffic).

The volume control included in iTunes is also useless (it doesn't matter if you try to crank it up to 100%, the resulting volume just doesn't change at all)

The only solution is to use MP3Gain to force a higher dB value (which also introduces clipping, but that's unavoidable).

So, I vote to keep the current MP3Gain UI unchanged in that respect.

And I'm completely sure that I will NEVER EVER buy an iPod in Europe. The next one will be from the United States. I'm not making the same mistake twice.

Regards.

mp3gain drawbacks?

Reply #26 –
Quote from: Leolo on
The incredibly stupid volume cap mandated by Law in the EU makes all your mp3 files replaygained to 89 dB absolutely inaudible in noisy areas (busy streets with a lot of traffic).

In this case, what you need are better headphones, with a better ability to reduce external noise. In such situation, pushing the volume of your player higher and higher is not the proper solution, and will possibly damage your hearing.
The default volume limitation on European iPods is limiting the output to 100dB with stock earplugs. If you really need to often go higher than that, I'm afraid to tell you that there will likely be irreversible consequences.

mp3gain drawbacks?

Reply #27 –
Quote from: Gabriel on
The default volume limitation on European iPods is limiting the output to 100dB with stock earplugs.
But 100dB of what for what input?

If it's for an input of 0dB FS sine wave, then if you run mp3gain with an 89dB target volume, the actual audio is never going to get anywhere near this loud.

Cheers,
David.


Quote from: Lyx on
In both cases - or more precisely any replaygain implementation which respects the 89dB reference - you need some kind of amp-function in the player..... optimally, a hardware-preamp for the headphones, since that would solve the root issue: weak amping of headphones/speakers. Humans have a tendency to just want an "implementation which works" without caring about how efficient that implementation is. If the weak hardware preamping is "fixed" on the software side, then the pressure to fix the actual hardware-problem vanishes. This is the case for both, changing references or on-the-fly amping.... its just that on-the-fly amping is temporary and therefore less destructive.
I don't think removing a simple software-level control to force people to upgrade their hardware is "efficient".

In a world where the vast majority of people have never heard of ReplayGain, and the vast majority of players don't support ReplayGain and are designed to "work" with modern hyper-compressed CDs, removing the ability to use a level higher than 89dB wouldn't apply pressure to "fix" weak amplifiers - it would just stop many people from using mp3gain.

Anyway, your core concern - that you might receive files from an unknown source with unknown mp3gain modification pre-applied - wouldn't be solved by fixing mp3gain at 89dB. You would still have the problem of not knowing whether the tracks were set at their original level, or with TrackGain applied, or with AlbumGain applied - and not being able to get back to the original level, or the AlbumGain level, if TrackGain had been pre-applied and the undo information subsequently stripped.

Cheers,
David.
 

mp3gain drawbacks?

Reply #28 –
Quote from: Snelg on
Yeah, I haven't really done anything with MP3Gain for years now. To be honest, I don't use it myself any more. I joined the iPod crowd, and now I just do a ReplayGain scan with foobar2k, and dump the Track Gain results into Apple's "iTunNORM" tag. Then with Sound Check turned on, the volume on all my stuff is correctly adjusted without having to modify the data.


Hey, thanks a lot for that info! Man, I was seriously outdated, I didn't know it was already possible to convert ReplayGain values to iTunNORM values.

I've followed your suggestion, and I'm using MP3Tag to convert the tags. It seems that the most suitable method for me is this one:

- Create a new Action with whatever name you wish.
- Set the action type to Format Value
- Set the field to COMMENT ITUNNORM
- Set the format string to $rg2sc($add(%REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN%,8))

Applying the newly created action and enabling "Sound Check" on the iPod should then set the volume to approximately 97 dB. That's a bit more reasonable level for listening to "modern" (i.e. overcompressed) music on the streets.

I find it a bit ironic that thanks to your advice now MP3Gain is no longer necessary for me! But nevertheless I'll keep it around for the future, it's been so useful for me for so long that I'm very fond of it!

Regards.

mp3gain drawbacks?

Reply #29 –
Sorry there but what does FWIW mean?



EDIT: I know now thanks to Dynamic