I am loving these forums, I've have been learning quite a lot.

I looked for posts about replaygain and vorbisgain, but I still have one question: do these programs affect the dynamic range of the audio file in any way?

I like having a good dynamic range in my music.

Read about ReplayGain and use the "search" function

I actually did use the search function, I'm not THAT lazy. I read through quite a few threads, and nowhere did I see it mentioned or even asked if it affected the dynamic range of a given track, which is why I asked here.

no

Given what I think dynamic range is, the question doesn't make much sense IMO. The answer would be "No." as said before. Could you please tell the (your) meaning of "dynamic range" in this context?

As in you hate highly compressed music like practically all rock soundtracks nowadays?

ReplayGain does not do anything to the dynamic range, it only recommends a playback volume to the player.

So I assume that means that replaygain provides a constant scaling factor on the entire track (or album), thus everything is amplified/attenuated the same and the dynamic range is still preserved.

Hmmmm...it *may* affect the dynamic range, but given the compressed nature of modern music it won't realistically be a problem.

But, imagine a hypothetical song that uses 80 dB of dynamic range while peaking at -10 dB. If RG calculates the gain to be -10 dB you will lose some dynamic range. If you have a 16-bit soundcard and if you use Foobar you can use dither to get around that, though. If you have a 24-bit soundcrd there is no problem to begin with.

thanks for all the help, and thanks Garf!! I've been enjoying your posts, especially the older sarcastic replies to certain peoples referring to "open source snobs" or something silly like that.

MTRH, sorry if I sounded a bit rude in that last post, I wasn't trying to be if it came across that way.

As for dynamic range, I did mean compressed... I don't hate it, it does sound good at times(I've recorded a few songs where I basically programmed a beat and ran it through a compressor on full, I like the effect), but I more often I prefer the mood and feeling that you can't get with a constant volume.

I don't know if that made any sense, but I think you know what I mean.

Again, thanks!

And Garf, I love your avatar, now I'm gonna have to out and by Lost Highway, I haven't seen it in far too long.