mp3gain claims to be a lossless change to mp3 files, yet it changes their volume level & I do not see any sort of "undo mp3gain." Sure, people could use a constant gain of 0.0, but a whole lot of people aren't going to understand that doing that effectively undos the mp3gaining.

Also, would it be worth it to make an option that applies the max gain for no clipping, only to files that would clip after being regularly mp3gained?

Something more technical... how does every standard MP3 player/decoder realize the MP3 gain value stored in the MP3? Is it some typically unused field in MP3s, or what?

The current (non-public) beta version of MP3Gain does have an Undo feature - it stores the necessary information in an APEv2 tag. Also, it can store ReplayGain information which is compatible with foobar2000.

And the "don't clip when doing track gain feature" is also already implemented and works beautifully.

I suppose Glen will release it within the next few weeks.

--
Regards,

Dominic Jefferies
Snelg Software Inc.
MP3Gain inofficial spokesman

Sweet!

Actually, a question occured to me... *CAN* the current mp3gain undo gain manually? Or is the mp3-gain-amount information not recoverable from the MP3 file with the current version?

And I'm still curious how mp3gain manages to work with every mp3 decoder. What does it modify that every dencoder can recognize?

If you know the gain changes you applied to the files (you can have MP3Gain save all gain changes to a log file), you can reverse it by manually applying a constant gain of the same value *(-1). If you don't have the logging feature enabled though, you're stuck. (For many modern albums, the original volume is one 1.5 dB step above the max no-clip volume.)




Take a look at the supplied help file, the way MP3Gain modifies MP3 files is nicely explained there. It modifies the Global Gain field of each frame header.

Arg, I'm too impatient!
*paces the room, waiting for the new mp3gain to be released*

I have an Archos Jukebox Multimedia 020. This is a portable MP3 Player.

Does anyone have any suggestions for the use of MP3 Gain for use in levelling for portable MP3 Players like this? I currently have songs at all sorts of levels, and one minute I am straining to listen, next I am nearly deaf from the loudness on the next random song.

I know there is Album Gain, Track Gain, and all sorts of no clip max gain, etc. Really I want one thing only. If I am listening to all of my songs on the player, I want them to sound all about the same volume.

What is the best settings for this? If someone has already come up with some good settings for this, and can share them, I would greatly appreciate it.

On a side note, why is it that some of the CDs I have converted to MP3 have all of the songs recorded as 100% gain in EAC? From reading this thread, it seams that this would be a bad idea. Is it just cheap CD manufacture?

Thank you
David

Well, if you simply use album gain, then all your tracks will be approximately the same volume (or at least closer than before) but the quiet songs will still remain quiet as intended, and the loud songs loud. I think this is a better setting than just track gain, because that would make all the songs the same volume, regardless of whether they were supposed to be quiet or not. Of course, using album gain also has the benefit of being able to play back a single album with all its dynamics intact.

So use album gain.. Oh, and don't mess with the 89dB default. It works best.

Any progress on the rewrite? I've never used MP3 Gain, and I'd like to make sure I do it correctly if I am to try it out. Thanks.

I totally agree with Jebus the best way to use mp3 gain is to leave de default level volume so almost any

mp3 won´t clip and to use album gain because every file sounds at it´s natural volume level.


Also I want to say that mp3 gain is very useful if you are an mp3 user, try it, if you haven´t done it yet!

I have never used this mp3gain before and was wondering if my soundcard drivers Auto Gain Control does the same thing as mp3gain. here is picture of the option http://www.tolley8.freeserve.co.uk/audio.PNG

Certainly not. Replaygain has to scan the whole file (or an album in AlbumGain mode), it can't work on-the-fly.

Okay i think i understand now. I read the windows media player 9 help files and it can add volume leveling values to Windows Media files or MP3 files so they all have the same volume level. So mp3gain does the same thing right? and does anyone know what Auto Gain control is in my sound drivers? Thanx

Yeh, WMP9 does essentially the same thing as replaygain (NOT mp3gain), in the sense that it adds tags which contain volume information. MP3Gain adjusts the files instead. I personally prefer to use MP3Gain in album mode and just turn off the WMP9 one because frankly I don't know how good it is, and in addition I want the files to sound the same even on portables (which obviously can't read the WMP9 tags).

The Auto Gain control probably just limits all the tracks to the same peak level, as most normalizers do. Problem is, peak level is a poor indicator of average volume.

Auto Gain Control reduces/increases gain to match some give value
basing on the gain of recently played audio.
Tends to destroy dynamics. It can work in realtime.

ReplayGain reduces/increases gain so that the audio percieved volume is same across tracks.
(Near -6 db at 1kHz, sensitivity of the ear at given frequency computed using A-weighted curve.)
Doesn't destroy dynamics, can't work in realtime.

Am I right in assuming mp3gain is the same thing as Replaygain in foobar ?

So as an alternative to using mp3gain I can just Replaygain with foobar and get the same results, yes ?

From what I've understood foo only stores the replaygain info in the database whereas MP3Gain actually alters the global gain field of every frame in the mp3 file.

89 db reference question splitted here : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=12315

Hi, I have some questions regarding MP3Gain.

Let's say I rip a CD with EAC, encode it with LAME, and then use MP3Gain to adjust it.

As an alternative, I'd rip the CD with EAC, use MP3Gain (or something similar, if MP3Gain doesn't support WAV), and then encode it with LAME.

Would there be any differences between the resulting MP3s?


/Agitator

@Agitator,
This has been discussed many times before:
here

Thanks, I looked for something like that, but didn't find it.
Guess I'm blind


/Agitator

I've used MP3GAIN for quite a while, and I've studied the open source code a good bit. I'm no MP3 encoding expert, but I *do* have one observation:

I am very tired of seeing MP3GAIN being described as a "lossless" process -- If you eq a file to be at lower volume than that at which it is originally encoded, using MP3GAIN or anything else, you will of necessity lose the softest pasages. So, for example, if I take 6db off a recording, anything that was recorded at the level of 6db or less in the original recording will, indeed, be lost.

I fear what people mean when they say MP3GAIN is "lossless" is that it's non-"destructive" of the original file info -- the MP3GAIN process can be reversed. But this does not make the gain adjustment LOSSLESS.

The assumption here is that MP3GAIN doesn't do any compression... that it does a simple adjustment of the gain (which, from my examination of the code, seems to be correct). Or, am I missing something?

Thanks,

PeterGV

I just started MP3Gaining my files, but I couldn't find:

Options\Each Folder Is Album (tick)

Or most of the other options listed in the first couple posts..

This option has been gone for quite some time.

You have to load one folder at a time and adjust it.

Actually, not so
If you load up a folder, each subfolder will be treated as a seperate album gain analysis.
Been doing it today - you can run it and check.

if you want to go automatic get case's sweep command utility and put in the command line to mp3gain to do album gain analysis through your files

Ahh. Thanks. I queued up my entire folder with subdirectories of albums. It works perfectly. Each folder is treated as an album.

It's been seven months since the original information was taken down. Is there anything new? Besides leaving the suggested decible setting at 89 dB, are there any MP3Gain recommendations?

Once my semester finals are out of the way. I'll sit down and experiment with the mp3gain and see what works best. I'll then hopefully compile everything into a useful tutorial. Semester finals will be over the friday January 23. Until them keep posting and hopefully some of the others have experimented.

Along with EAC, LAME, and MP3Gain is there anything else required to do this? Im putting all the eggs in one basket. LOL.

for mp3,
you need EAC, Lame.exe, mp3gain, nothing more, maybe foobar2000 as best player.

Maybe Easylame or razorlame.

About the mp3gain guide:


I am sure, snelg has included all information in his help texts inside the mp3gain program.

If you are unsure how it works,
Just get it and run it over eg. 3 songs as test-album, maybe anotehr testalbum with additional 3 songs, both testalbums in 1 test folder.


If you need assistance, guides are here in 2nd (by westgroveG) and 3rd post, still, the erased 1st post is not needed, just read the 1st page (2nd, 3rd post will be enough).

I'm getting an error whenever I use MP3gain...

"Failed to load control 'ImageList' from MSCOMCTL.OCX. Your Version of MSCOMSTL.OCX may be outdated. Make sure you are using the version of the control that was provided with your application."

I installed the "full" MP3gain package, I even tried manually deleting MSCOMCTL.OCX & reinstalling it from the full MP3gain installer, but every time I try to run MP3gain that error pops up. =(

EDIT: I noticed that Speek's MultiFrontend also uses the same OCX library, and also comes with a VB runtime library. Installing Multi's included MSCOMCTL.OCX still brought up the same problem, but installing the VB runtime files solved the problem completely.

I would've thought that the full MP3Gain install would include everything nessesary to run the program.

somebody requested in PM to me a rewrite of the mp3gain guide, according to new improved mp3gain.

Who wants to ?

Maybe this has already been answered, but should I use the MP3Gain program or could I just use the replaygain scanner in foobar2000?
Which is the better?

MP3Gain is applied to the file - any player (including hardware) will play the file with given gain,
as opposed to Foobar's scanner, which stores replaygain info in the tags:
a player must support it in order to read this gain.

The better is the one that suits your interests.

Couple questions...

I'm running MP3Gain 1.2.3 and a lot of the options mentioned in the tut are moved/missing, so I did the best I could to MP3Gain all my mp3's to 89dB. At least 80% of my 5k mp3s will have clipping according to this setting. I tried 83dB and little has changed. Should I try lower than 89 or higher?

Secondly, MP3Gain tells me maximizing is bad, so I didn't use it. Maybe this is why I'm getting such severe clipping... I'll fiddle and find out. Should I ignore MP3Gain's warning?

Thirdly, I can't find the radio/audiophile option, is it gone?

One last Q... does winamp need a plugin for replay gain stuffs?

I'm brand new to this forum, and I hope I'm not repetitive. I apoligize do repeat a question.

I use a 4G ipod, 40Gb which is already loded with tons of my songs (about 70% full). As I understand it, in order to acheive "normalized" volume among my tunes, I ought to run MP3 gain at 89Db on album gain, to maintain the dynamics of each album (Jebus, 6/03). That's fine.

Now, I have all my songs in iTunes and before I discovered the MP3 Gain Program I would adjust the iTunes volume slider for each album, attempting to bring all of my albums to similar levels. Once I run MP3 Gain as described above, should I #1)wipe my iPod and reload it with the newly MP3gained tracks, and/or #2) can I select all of my albums and reset the volume slider to default and have my tracks all be pleasing in volume?

As you can likely tell, I'm not too savvy on the ins and outs of audio. I just don't want to have to leap for the volume on my stereo after every track.

Thanks in advance, and thanks to all who posted in the past. Its all been very informative.

Just out of curiousity, why not enable SoundCheck? That's what it's designed to do. It's not quite as good as ReplayGain, but it's not bad, in my experience.


Ideally, you will want to remove the tracks from the iTunes library, make sure none of them have the iTunNorm comment tag in them, and readd them to the iTunes library. This ensures that the new, adjusted volume, will be scanned correctly by the iTunes SoundCheck routine, and that the level adjustments won't be ridiculously off if you happen to enable SoundCheck at some future point.

Of course, clearing the iTunes library and re-importing your music will mean the loss of Playcounts, Last Played time, and Rating information. You can use this little script I wrote to save/restore this information from/to iTunes: http://otto.homedns.org:8888/itunes/SaveRatings.zip

Or just use foo_pod instead. It'll convert ReplayGain information from foobar 2000 into correct SoundCheck information on the iPod, without the need to use MP3Gain to modify the actual files.

Thanks Otto--

Soundcheck has been problematic for me, making some songs far too loud and other soft. I think it might be because my collection spans many genres and some of the CDs are old and mastered lower.

As for foo_pod, I'm not familiar. What does it do and how does it work in layman's terms? Where do I get it? Sorry, as I said I'm not too savvy with any of this stuff.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=19156&

Edit: Go to the end of the thread for the latest version.

Can I undo once I adjust Db levels with MP3Gain, and can I import the modified files back to iTunes easily, just by using File>Import and selecting my entire "iTunes Music" file?

Also, is there anything I need to know to run your script?

(Thanks for the foo_pod link, odious malefactor. I'll check it out)

Sure. Just import the whole thing.


It's written in the form of an HTML-Application, so you'll need Windows. Just double click to run it. Have iTunes running when you start it up. Beyond that, it's fairly self-explanatory.

It keys off of Song name and Artist and Album, so don't change any of those tags in any of your music between your uses of the Save and Restore functionality, or it won't work.

Ok, just to be sure ( I have lots of tunes and track info on my iPod and am nervous about wiping my iTunes library and reimporting):

Playcount, Ratings and Last Played Time will be lost, but restored by the script you showed me. How about stuff like EQ presets, Genre, and year? Will I lose those? Also, I use the "Grouping" field for key words and phrases that can be recognized for Smart Playlists, for example, "Cover Song" or "Single". Do they vanish as well when I clear and reimport my tunes after MP3gaining them?

On a side note, does ipod even use the EQ presets you specify in iTunes?

Thank you for your patience and expertise.

EQPresets would be lost. You could modify that script I wrote to save/restore the EQPresets as well though. I don't use them, so I didn't add them to the thing.

Genre and Year are in the file tags, so they would be pulled back in when you import the tunes.


Yep, grouping would be lost. Again, it's pretty easy to modify that script to save/restore that as well. And again, I don't use them, so they are not saved. And Grouping based smart playlist also don't work properly on the iPod, so I don't use them. They work fine if you have the latest iPod firmware, but the Live Updating feature fails on any Grouping-based SmartPlaylist, if you have a 3G or later iPod. Confused yet?

Simpler version: If you have a newer iPod (3rd Gen and above), then the smart playlists can work in real time on the iPod itself. Meaning that if I have a playlist defined as "Last Played is not in the last 2 weeks", and then I play a song from that playlist all the way through, and then go back to the playlist again, the song will no longer be in that playlist. All without syncing to a computer. The iPod is smart enough to remove the song from the playlist after it's played. This comes in very handy for me. However, any Smart Playlist that has a rule using either "Grouping" or "Playlist" breaks this functionality. The smart playlist will not change until it's synced to a computer again. Not critical for most people, but it annoys me so I avoid using those types of rules in smart playlists.

Also, use of the Grouping field is unsafe, as it's probably going to change in the future. Apple seems to have intended the grouping field to define groups of songs that should be played together. Think of Queen's "We Will Rock You" and "We are the Champions".. These songs are nearly always combined. The purpose of the grouping field seems to be to be able to define several songs as part of a single group and thus always play them together, even in randomized playlists and such. This is not yet fully implemented, it seems, but some songs being downloaded from the iTunes Music Store, notably classical works, have had the Grouping fields filled in this fashion. At some future point, they may get this working on the iPod and suddenly you'll find that the songs with the same grouping always play together.

My advice is to use the Comments field for this sort of thing instead, and leave Grouping blank or use it as it seems to be intended, to group songs together.


Yes and no. If you use the built in EQ Presets, like "Rock" and "Bass Booster" and so forth, then yes, they will transfer and be used on the iPod. For this to work, you need to have the iPod's EQ set to anything other than "Off". Setting it to "Flat" is the most common way to enable the EQ Presets to work.

If you have defined your own custom presets, then the data transfers, but the iPod does not currently use that data (I confirmed this myself through testing). So while it may work at some future point, it doesn't work currently. Everything the iPod needs to do it is there, it's just not doing it yet.

This thread is always coming backup so here a few extra hints for users

• Album analyses calculates track/album values so performing an album analyses is all you need to do.
  
• MP3Gain now supports writing changes to ID3 tag so it is 100% lossless.
  
• As of LAME 3.96 (track) replaygain values are automatically written to the lame tag,
  
• Unlike MP3Gain, values stored in the lame tag need to be applied during playback which requires more CPU processing & the decoder to be aware.
  
• Foobar can automatically scan & adjust replaygain values without any need for MP3Gain but of course some of us don’t like this audio player.

I’m to busy to update this guide right now

Hi westgroveg,
thanks for the brief summary of today's possibilities,
I think, I copy it with your permission to first post.

Of course user

One more thing, make sure you tag before using replaygain or instead of your replaygain values being hidden they appear in the comment field for some reason which can be annoying.

I'm helpless at programming. Is it possible for you to provide the necessary changes to the script or some coaching on how to save the "grouping" field as well? After I do the gain adjustments and reimporting I'll take your advice and move all grouping info to comments. That sounds like a smart idea.

Any recommendations on how to best back up one's iTunes Library beforehand? I usually make a duplicate of the itunes library xml file for starters.

Backing up the XML file is fine. Assuming your file positions don't change, that's another way to reimport everything. And I think you wouldn't need my script if you did it that way.

Try this:
1. Rename the "iTunes something.ITL" file to something else.
2. Create a new "whatever that file is.ITL" but make it just a blank zero byte file. Just do "File->New->Text Document" and then rename the new text document to be the same name that the ITL file was.
3. Start iTunes.

What will happen is that iTunes will see that the ITL file is "corrupt" and it will reread the XML file to reimport everything. This gets all the data from that file and might be easier for you to deal with. It should preserve everything this way.

So as long as you don't move/rename your music, you can go that route instead of messing with scripts. Might be simpler if you can't do scripting. Although frankly, scripting is really, really easy. Seriously, open that file you got from me in a text editor. It's pretty obvious what to do. But if that's too hard, consider a different method like this XML trick.

Thanks Otto42. Unfortunately it turns out a large number of my files are AAC. I had no idea. Anything to be done about that as an alternative to Foobar2000? Can Foobar use al of the info I have stored in iTunes, like playlists and all of the different fields we discussed?

Maybe "completely reversible" is a better term than "100% lossless" which is slightly misleading in my opinion.

Does anyone have a solution on how to fix the fluctuation of volume levels between songs on my ipod, which is packed with mostly AAC files (I originally imported in Mp3 until the new version of iTunes came out and was automatically set to AAC, which I'd never heard of so I didn't think to switch the import settings). I use iTunes for PC. It seems as though there are several MAC based solutions out there with mixed reviews.

Of course, the mp3gain solution discussed above is great for MP3, but no good for AAC, and apparently there's nothing like AACgain out there yet. Also, my understanding is that converting AAC to MP3 is a bad idea and will sound like hell.

I really have a small knowledge base here, so if anyone can help me out on this issue, I'd really appreciate it. This rollercoaster rof volume is driving me nuts!

(Otto42 was extremely helpful when I thoght my files were all MP3, but then I went to do MP3gain on my iTunes folder and noticed that not nearly all of my tunes showed up! Thanks Otto42 for your patience!)

Joelman: The only suggestion I have left for you is stop using iTunes and switch to foobar 2000 with foo_pod for your iPod syncing needs. Use foobar to run the ReplayGain on all your files and then foo_pod will transfer that information to the iPod by converting it to the "soundcheck" parameter. So that you would turn on SoundCheck on the iPod and it would use the ReplayGain info from foobar instead. Both of these basically do the same thing, the main difference between them is the method by which they determine the "average" song volume.

There is no perfect volume levelling, and if iTunes' SoundCheck doesn't work for you, it's not likely that ReplayGain methods will either. They're better, but not all that much better. It's not a night and day type of difference, sort of thing.

Furthermore, SoundCheck will likely work better than MP3Gain or the theoretical AACGain for the simple reason that both of these program can only adjust the volume level in 1.5dB increments, while SoundCheck can adjust it much finer and more exactly. foobar/foo_pod would do the same sort of thing, with a far more exact volume adjustment.