Hello, I am currently in the middle of encoding all my cds to flac using DBpoweramp. I am applying the replaygain option with album mode = 0. After all the tracks have been encoded, the program waits a few minutes while copys of the flac files are created. I am guessing this is to input the replaygain album data, as the replaygain track data is written when the file is first encoded. My question is why does it need to create a copy of the file, can the programme not just write the data into the tag? I am slightly worried that the programme is applying gain to the files rather than just writing it into the tags.

Thankyou for any input you have on this

Matt

Edit: Just noticed it doesnt seem to do this with albums without album art, could this be the reason for it?

maybe, if album art is added after the file is encoded and there was not enough padding in the flac file to accomodate the album art, the whole file has to be rewritten.
edit:typos

Do you have the Verify option set? by default FLAC tags are padded.

Thankyou for your suggestions,

Verify written audio was not on. I have tried it with that option enabled and it has the same effect.



An example of a rewritten file:

Size before = 24,950,255 bytes: Size after = 24,950,316 bytes

So it looks like it is just adding the albumgain tag as it is not ~8kb which is the size of the embedded album art.

Im just curious as to why it needs to rewrite the whole file, as its adding ~2mins on to each CD I rip.

It is how we currently handle album art, it is rewritten completely.

Thanks for your answer, glad to know its not changing the audio data, i can sleep easy!

You batch convert all your flac files to 'Test Conversion' if the md5 does not compare with any of your flac files, dBpoweramp will tell you.