hi

for my mp3s i use mp3gain to apply track gain which is usually at 92db. for conversion from a format to another i use dbpoweramp. the idea is that i want to apply a similar gain to my flac files. for that dbpoweramp has a dsp effect called volume normalize. if i apply this dsp effect to my flac files do i lose any quality?

Replaygain is also supported.
Volume normalize is a destructive way, it changes the audio and it can't be undone, while replaygain is just information in the tag that can be applied by the player.

but lets say that a want to play the files in my car (after converting them to WAV of corse - a read on this forum that by converting from flac to wav i don't lose any audio quality), do i lose audio quality by using volume normalize??

FLAC/WAV is lossless format. When you normalize any format, you will NOT be able to get back to the original audio data - In theory you lose "quality", but you will not be able to discern the quality loss in this case.

I'd recommend using replaygain, which is just a tag, that tells the player to adjust the volume accordingly. If you want to create CD's with adjusted volume, you can do that, but keep the original FLAC's safe

thank you for your help

Sorry for reviving this thread, I just have a quick query that I want to be clear on. Please forgive my ignorance too as I have relatively little experience with FLAC files!

I recently burned FLAC files to audio CD using Nero Burning Rom (Nero 7). The CD volume during playback seems quite low so I was thinking of re-burning using the volume normalisation option in Nero.

Is it OK to do this? Does it in some way affect the quality or does it cause any distortion/damage (for want of a better word) to the FLAC files?

Cheers

Anybody willing to help out a newbie??

I've searched the forum for the answer to my question but all I can find is advice on normalisation for ripping to FLAC, and that people recommend using Replay Gain instead of normalising.

I'm not concernced with ripping though, just with burning FLAC files to create Audio CDs.

Thanks

Replaygain is the recommended approach because you then store the audio of the CD unaltered. Only during playback is the volume adjusted so that different tracks have the same perceived loudness.

In order to burn Flac tracks giving them the same perceived volume, there are several options depending on the operating system you use.

* sox (http://sox.sourceforge.net/) is a crossplatform utility that allows you directly to decode flac to a wav with replaygain adjusted volume
[edit]This option requires flac support to be compiled in[/edit]

* equally crosplatform is wavegain that allows you to replaygain wav files after you have created them from any other format (option 1 will be more efficient in speed and disk usage)

[edit]
* As documented here http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....=556199&st=
flac has an undocumented option --apply-replaygain-which-is-not-lossless that supports decoding accounting for replaygain tags. See for more details http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofive...php/t17293.html
[/edit]

* Windows users can rely on foobar, where you can convert files accounting for the replay gain tag.

Is it possible to develop a tool like MP3Gain for FLAC? MP3Gain alter the gain of the files mathematically and losslessly, when you do have the UNDO information of the altered audio. Could something like this be developed for FLAC? (Eg. ZIOVA does not support replaygain).

Just convert FLAC files from 16-bit to 24-bit After this it is possible to reduce volume by 20*Log10(N/256), where N=1...255. But this also should result in increased bitrate.

First, 3/2 = 1 (since audio is stored in integer), 1*2 != 3.
From this, i want to imply that restoring the gain to the audio data would need a "correction file". In MP3 it can (usually, but not on all cases) be restored, because it is an integer (each frame) that is changed up or down, and not the whole data.


Second, see here and scroll down to "Wavegain":

http://www.rarewares.org/others.php