I reripped my entire CD collection into mpc standard (it was --insane before this) but only on the last few encodes did I actually look at the output of the batch encoder. It said there were internal clippings! The only command line argument I used was --standard. It recommended that I use --scale or --xlevel, but I don't want to rerip everything all over again... you think this problem is severe enough to rerip.?(If this results in any audible outcomes, I will rather rerip.)

Btw, I thought --standard is standard period. I don't like getting messages about clipping when I am encoding "standard".

For SV7 encodes you have to use --xlevel switch. Do not ask why, just USE IT.
In SV8 --xlevel won't be needed anymore.

As for re-ripping, if those albums are solid-brick (modern-mastering) overcompressed + square wave clipped CDs, I'd rerip 'em with --xlevel.

Read the sticky 'List of recommended MPC settings' in General - (MPC). It will give valuable information, and give a link for downloading Replaygain.

Well fuck...

It's not really necessary to re-rip if you have already ripped many CDs! Just rip with --standard --xlevel from now on, and you'll be fine. It's safer to use --xlevel, but most of the time you wouldn't even hear the difference, since the mastering is already quite bad.

from my tests with version 1.14 (on just one problem sample) --xlevel does absolutely nothing to prevent clipping, isnt the RG real answer here?

--xlevel doesn't prevent clipping. without --xlevel anything that would get clipped just gets discarded. with --xlevel, it gets encoded but still clips. The difference is, you can use replaygain to get those sounds back, but without --xlevel they are gone forever.

edit: why would a decoder suggest 'scale' option to decode clipped sound even if there was no --xlevel used then?

Two types of clipping. Encoder vs. decoder side clipping. Encoder clipping happens, when the encoder wants to store a value in the mpc file that is too high to fit into the designated space. Sometimes the resynthesized signal exceeds the limits of the PCM number space; that's decoder clipping. The two are not neccessarily linked; you can have decoder clipping without encoder clipping. So it makes perfect sense for the decoder to detect that the decoded signal clips and suggest means to compensate for that.

The reason mpc doesn't use --xlevel per default is beacuse those files won't decode correctly with old decoders and I mean really old decoders. The current decoder, winamp plugin, foobar plugin all decode xlevel files properly. Not sure about the xmms plugin though.

got it, tnx jebus and gecko. B)

Wait a second... I don't use replaygain. So if --xlevel is useful only with replaygain, should I just not care about it anyway?

--xlevel is a counter measure for encoder side clipping. Encoder side clipping can't be fixed on the decoder side. Replaygain, apart from volume normalizing, also calculates the factor needed to scale the music to avoid decoder side clipping. When decoding you don't need to use the volume normalization part, you can just use the data calculated by replaygain to avoid decoder side clipping.

There should be a usable explanation of the various replaygain/clipping prevention decoder modes in the "mpc recommended settings" sticky.

Amazing.

Regards,
Madrigal

You should always replaygain your files to avoid clipping artifacts. This is exceptionally important on modern music because so much of it is overcompressed (and thus goes over the limit when an encoder quantizes it).

You can use replaygain to just reduce things to a level where clipping is removed, if you aren't keen on normalizing. But your tracks will sound MUCH better if for instance you just took them all down by 2dB. Course if you didn't encode with --xlevel this won't fix the problem.

hrrrm, I am disappointed.

Especially for questions like asked by riskyP, there is the sticky "List of recomneded settings".

People need only to read and follow that thread

There is clearly written to use --xlevel, and to use replaygain.

hmm, maybe the usage of --xlevel and replaygain should be emphazised even more there?

At a point, I had the idea, to write there only the combined settings

--quality 5 --xlevel
--quality 6 --xlevel
--quality 7 --xlevel
--quality 8 --xlevel

but that was refused.


Maybe we add --xlevel now there ?
Until it is included in SV8 or similar ?

Ok, done.