Looked every where but I can't find what I'm looking for... so I'm going to ask.


1) What does Regainplay do? (Don't flame me)

2) How do I make it work?




Thanks....
Jason

1) What does Regainplay do?
http://www.geocities.com/mp3gain/ this site does a very nice job of explaining replay gain. Read the seciton on peak normalization and statistical analysis. I would try to explain it but I don't I can do it well enough. Sorry.

2) How do I make it work?
If you open up foobars preferences and navigate to playback. In about the middle is the section on replay gain. In the box you have three options: disabled, track gain, and album gain. Disabled means just that. Track gain means to use the data of that particular file as the reference regardless of the other files in the same folder with it. We are going to replay gain each song as an individual file. The album gain setting allows you to put all the songs from the same album in a folder and replay gain them but keeping the differences in db among the songs. Example - 10 songs ripped from one single album. If we track gain them to say 89db then each file will be repaly gained to 89db regardless of the other songs in the folder. It we album gain the same folder, each song will be replay gained but if some of the songs were quieter than others, they will still be quieter even though they were replay gained. try again. Album gain allows you to keep the subtle differences among the songs.

I have use peak info to scale down tracks that still clip after replaygain. A bit of insurance policy to make sure they don't clip.

I have replay gain set at the default +-0 or 89db. This is the safest. But in order for me to listen to burned cd's (mix cds) I have jacked it up to +6db. This increases the db for each song so I don't have to keep turning the volume up and down while driving. Use it with caution as todays cd's are really jacked up and it doesn't take much for them to clip.

Now close the window and goto foobars main window. Load the songs you want to replay gain. Highlight them and righ click. A little better than half way down is replaygain. Choose what you want to do and foobar will take over from there.

Sorry if I went into too much detail.

Thank you... the more details the better. I have this one song that I have to put gain on +9.0db..... thats one low song eh?
Also is there a faster way of replaygaining all my songs? Even on a 1800 AMD XP it's slow.

It could be that the songs are clipping and replaygain is limiting it thus the quieter sonding song. If you undo the checkmark for use peak info to scale down tracks that still clip after replaygain - it may help but could possibly (will most likely) allow the song to clip.

I have noticed that with older cds you can replay gain a farily large amount without clipping (like you saw +9). The new stuff coming out is already near the max and some clips right off the cd.

I don't know of any way to make it go faster. Remember it is crunching a gang of data. Try doing it on a 333. I set it up and then go wash the house...just kidding. It takes a while.

http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org

I'm looking for a plugin for winamp 2.91 that can use the replaygain i've added to the files with foobar2000.
The only plugin I can find is:
Replay Gain Winamp DSP Plugin Copyright © 2002 Matthijs Laan
http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/replaygain/
The problem is that this plugin uses it's own database. As far as I understand, the replaygain added with foobar2000 is written to the APEv2 tag. Can winamp read APEv2 tags, or is there a plugin to do this?

The reason I need this, is because I'm not the only one using this computer. I use foobar2000 myself, but it would be great if winamp had the same replaygained output volume as I add with foobar2000.

If anyone can help, I, my ears, speakers and headphones would be thankful

With modern CD's that are victims of the loudness war there are two effects working against each other:

1. The original CD is consistently LOUD!!! because it's been distorted to make it sound louder. This means RG has to turn them down a lot to bring them to 89 dB volume. Because it's turned down a lot, it could be made a lot louder without clipping.

2. The original CD is distorted to keep it near full scale, which generates harmonic distortion (new frequencies added) so that when a lossy encoder like Musepack or an MP3 encoder encodes it, those frequencies might change, and it is will sometimes clip when decoded without changing the volume. This means it's more likely to clip, as does the sheer number of peaks near full scale on the original.

Despite 2, causing many MP3s to clip at the same volume as the WAV ripped from the CD, it's 1 that's usually the greater effect in dB(unless you encode at very low quality, and the harmonic distortion tends to require more bitrate so CBR encodes at 128kbps may sound worse than for older CDs and have higher peaks).

I've found that certain older tracks encoded with Musepack standard tended to have the highest peaks after applying Track Gain to a compilation of new and old.

Anyhow, my recommendation for normal use is to use Album Gain, 89 dB with "Use peak info" ticked. Remember that to scan your tracks you use the right mouse button on your selection in the playlist window to bring up the Replaygain menu (among others). It took me a while to find that first time I used FB2K!