Is there a way to make winamp 2.80 play ape files using some replaygain, like you can do with vorbis and musepack? When configuring ape plugin I get just an option of normalizing to 90...100% if peak is less than 90...100%. Even if I choose normalize to 90% if peak less than 100%, ape files still sound much louder than mpc and ogg vorbis.

Well normalize is actually made to make quiet songs loud, so making all songs quiet is bound to fail.Also it only works with MA 3.00 or later, but still, like I said above.
Anyway I read on the monkeys audio forum that some kind of replay gain embedded in the tag is planned for the next release(along with a higher compression option), all we can do is wait.
Personally though my APE files play a teeeeeeeny bit softer then mp3's.(don't have any mpc's)
(All my APE files and mp3's that I have on this current computer are freshly ripped(new pc, others are on CD's)
I rip to APE, my dad to mp3(he wants a lot on one burnt CD, I want hq)
It just so happens that me and my dad both independently ripped two same albums.So I compared songs of the two.

My configs:
All ripped with EACsecure(latest version, freshly downloaded last week), no normalizing.
APE encoded with latest MAC(downloaded three days ago), high setting.Playback thru winamp plug-in: normalizing disabeld.
MP3's encoded with LAME 3.92 setting: --alt-preset 160.Playback thru winamp, default settings.
I have winamp 2.81, I use all the default settings.(haven't tweaked it yet need to install my plug-ins.

If you have replay gain on vorbis and mpc, maybe you should set it to a higher level to accomodate your MA files.

So it looks like we really have to wait till next release of MA.



What you suggested could be a nice temporal solution, but even if I lowered the K-value for mpc, raised preamp for vorbis and activated normalizing for ma, there would still be some bad points of this:

1. no album gain for MA

2. everything would be quite loud, so I could hardly hear other sounds (like when another program finishes something)

3. maybe there could also occur some clipping?

That was the idea, untill the next MA with replay-gain.

And if everything becomes loud, why don't you just lower the sound volume in winamps output plug-in? (thats the slide bar next to the balance ofcourse).

Anyway I also want replaygain for MA, and I am faithful that it will be implented by the next release, and if not then someday, because MA is the most popular lossless codec out there , and lossless = high quality and replaygain = high quality.
With other words, they were meant for each other.

It never occured to me I'm almost sure that in some previous versions of Winamp that slider in main winamp window only controlled the wave slider in "Volume control" and changed loudness of most other sounds, too.