I have a question regarding mp3gain. I know that the mp3 encoding process adds some gain to the resultant mp3. So, now I've ripped about 25 albums with EAC and 3.90.2. If I do an mp3 analysis, each album clips by 1.5 dB. Is this the same as the gain added by the encoding process, ie, can i reduce the gain by 1.5 dB and have a mp3 that has a 'very similiar' gain as the the original wav?

as far as I know there is no gain added. It's just that an mp3 stores a representation of the orginal signal that should sound the same, it doesn't store the original signal itself, so there can be and are anomalies such as some peaks higher than they originally were

well, we all know that mp3's can introduce clipping, that is one of the reasons we use mp3 gain. What I wanna know is that since all my albums seem to clip by +1.5 dB, if I reduce it by -1.5 dB and then burn this to a cd, is this now as close to the gain level as the original as I'm gonna get?

not changing the gain in the mp3s at all is going to give you the closest to the original as possible

Not really.

It all depends on whether you consider a miniscule change in volume, or digital clipping, to be a bigger difference from the original.

so, I should just bang it down -1.5db?

he was talking about difference in gain from the original, not differences in general

that depends on the player you're using to play it back with. If you're playing it back on some hardware player then you probably should take it down 1.5dB with mp3gain *after* encoding, rather than adjusting the .wav itself beforehand. Well, unless you don't mind reencoding it for uses other than the hardware player, because if you adjust the wav before encoding then you're losing a little information. But if you simply adjust it with mp3gain then you don't lose any information in that respect. If however you're using a player like foobar then you're probably better off leaving it as is, and utilizing the replaygain features. Chances are that the replaygain values will be more than sufficient to avoid clipping. And in cases where it isn't, there's also the limiter feature to help you out in that situation.