Hi all,

Been lurking here for a day or 2, and decided to take the plunge. You guys and girls have incredible knowledge, but I don't, so apologies for any dumb questions. Have searched at home, but am at work now with limited PC time, so sorry if this is covered already.

I've been ripping CDs with EAC/FLAC, purely for use on my DAP. I'd like to use ReplayGain (album gain for albums, track gain for singles/various artists etc) to stop tweeking the volume. Will be using Foobar when I come home for this.

I compress at level 5, and will set a standard of 92 dB. Should I enable clipping? I know that the music will be no longer "lossless", but will I be able to hear any appreciable difference on my DAP (iAudio X5 ,Sennheiser CX300 earphones?). I know this is a subjective thing, but I'm unsure if clipping is necessary.

Thanks for all tips and help. I'm far from being a teccy, but I look forward to playing with Foobar - looks like it's over my head, but there's good tutorials, but I'll be posting on the Foobar subforum before the week is over, I am sure!

You don't set a "standard". That wouldn't be replaygain anymore. You replaygain your albums then set your preamp on both your players to what you want. Clipping prevention just stops clipping on high preamps.

Thanks very much for your quick reply and help. I used 92 dB for mp3 files before (MP3Gain), and was happy with that, so I was using it as an arbitary example. Will experiment tonight and find what I'm happy with.

Thank you again.

You don't set a standard because the standard is already set.



But you are correct in that you just apply ReplayGain without further specification. You adjust the final "equal volume" setting using a preamp.

To address the OP's concern about using album gain for albums and track gain for single/various artists, there is some mix up here. An album released with various artists will in all likelihood still have an album gain be more applicable, unless it is an amateur production.

The big issue here is with playback. In players like foobar you set globally which gain to use for ReplayGain, track or album. You can't say use album gain on these tracks, and track gain on these other tracks. The quick solution is to set foobar globally to use album gain. Then on your individual tracks, just set the album gain equal to the track gain (i.e. calculate the replaygain for the track individually and have it applied to both track and album gain). Now, you will have the result you want.

It's -89dB now.