Does Replay gain work differtly in Media monkey, Foobar and Media Monkey given 2 differnt Results Options

[jimmanningjr]

Hey Anyone,
For the past 2 years I have been using Media Monkey to Organize and play my music collection which is now about 42,000 tracks about 75% of my collection has Replay gain Values....I am making the switch over to Foobar2000 and was about to replay gain the other 25% with it (Foobar) when I discovered that for the same album I was getting 2 different values...and it is making me wonder does Media Monkey use a different algorithm or is there something I am overlooking...both are set to tag by ALBUM with the track value put in there also. Here are my results:

Miles Davis /Jack Johnson Soundtrack/
Trk1 Right Off -FOOBAR--Album Gain -1.97db Trk Gain -2.49db
Trk 2 Yesternow-FOOBAR Album Gain -1.97db Trk Gain -0.87db

Trk 1 Right Off Media monkey--Album Vol=-7.9db Trk Vol= -8.4db
Trk 2 Yesternow Media Monkey--Album Vol= -7.9db Trk Vol= - 6.8db

Could someone shed some light on this for me.
Thank You

[2Bdecided]

Notat,

Maybe I didn't make it clear, so let me do so - apart from the bugs, MM isn't doing anything different from fb2k.

If you use ReplayGain via tags (i.e. don't alter the audio itself), MM writes absolutely standard tags referenced to the standard 89dB level, and thankfully there is nothing you can do to change this. "Target volume level for Playback" is a pre-amp applied at playback. Nothing more. It doesn't affect the tags.

If you choose to apply the ReplayGain change to the files (i.e. alter the audio itself, like wavgain or mp3gain etc etc), then it lets you specify the target level - just as mp3gain has done from the very beginning.


So, if you use tags, files can be shared between people without any issues.

If you apply you own choice of gain change, then shared files won't match. You'll have to re-gain them. Some software writes undo information.

If there's no undo information, and someone applied track gain, but you want album gain, or the original loudness as found on the CD, then you're stuffed. As you frequently will be in many different ways when sharing lossy files at random.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. Use 83dB (MM) = -6dB (fb2k) and it'll be very rare that clipping prevention kicks in. Or at least, "very rare" overall in the grand scheme of things - I've no idea what tracks you have in your own collection.

[Notat]

Thanks for the clarification. What is throwing me off is that the Media Monkey interface reports different Track Volume and Album Volume values than the tags it writes. It seems to be reporting gains relative to my 85 dB Target Volume setting (i.e. tag value -4 dB) but when I change the Target Volume, neither the numbers nor the playback level seems to change. Something messed up there.

In my library I have material with album gain ranging from -13.00 dB (Californication) to +3.17 (Brothers in arms). My 85 dB setting is about optimal for this range.

[2Bdecided]

when I change the Target Volume, neither the numbers nor the playback level seems to change. Something messed up there.

It certainly changes for me when you change the Target volume level for Playback. Try turning it down an extreme amount to check. You'll have to re-start playback for it to take effect though - it's not immediate.

In my library I have material with album gain ranging from -13.00 dB (Californication) to +3.17 (Brothers in arms). My 85 dB setting is about optimal for this range.

- well, nothing will ever get turned up, and with lossless files clipping prevention will never get applied. I assume you have a decent sound card, system, etc. in which case it will work very well.

It wouldn't be optimal if your sound card or system components were junk, because you could be throwing away dynamic range that you didn't have to spare. Lots of people seem to worry about this, not always with justification.

Cheers,
David.

This post has been edited by 2Bdecided: Sep 7 2010, 16:50