Hey All,

Are there any Fuze owners who can comment on SanDisk's ReplayGain implementation? I've read their official thread within their forums, but am still not sure about some things.

I've recently purchased a Fuze which supports Album and Track ReplayGain. So far, I really like the player, but I'm not sure about the relationship between ReplayGain and VorbisGain.

I have a mixture of Ogg Vorbis and LAME MP3 files. I'd like to implement ReplayGain for all of them. For my Ogg Vorbis files, if I use fb2k's ReplayGain feature, will the Fuze recognize the metadata and implement the gain values? If so, what is the advantage of using VorbisGain instead? Or is fb2k automatically using VorbisGain when the files are ogg?

Is the difference in how/where the metadata is stored? VorbisComment is used for VorbisGain, while (according to the wiki) LAME stores it in the header. Is the Sandisk implementation only looking for the metadata in certain a place(s)?

Thanks for any insights,

John

I don't think that any decoder other than LAME itself pays any attention to Replaygain data stored in the LAME Info header block, though I'm willing to be corrected. That's why fb2k's converter options for LAME usually include the No Replaygain option for LAME since FB2K is normally used to scan for RG anyway, and is usually used to scan for both Track and Album gain and peaks (whereas LAME only does Track Gain and usually not even Track Peak).

FB2K uses the appropriate tagging for each format. For MP3 that defaults to ID3v1 plus ID3v2 when necessary, which is pretty widely supported (you can over-ride this option). For Ogg Vorbis the defined tagging format is VorbisComment, which is also used by VorbisGain. It save the confusion of non standard tagging.

At least in_mad.dll (input plugin for Winamp) can use it. Don't know about the other software that use that value.
Also IIRC LAME decoder doesn't pay attention to RG data.

I own a Sansa Fuze myself and use Winamp's ReplayGain scanner. The DAP recognizes the RG values just fine.
The RG values for Vorbis files are stored in the VorbisComment. Both players use it for their RG scans and that's exactly what the Sansa Fuze reads so you should have no problems with Vorbis files whatsoever.
As for MP3, foobar2000 stores RG values in the ID3v2 (ID3v2 2.4 to be more precise) tag by default with the option to store them in the APE tag. Winamp stores the RG values in the ID3v2 tag (ID3v2 2.3 to be more precise) only. The Fuze however reads only ID3 tags, and not APE tags. So if you use Winamp or foobar's default method for storing the RG values, you should be just fine. There should be a problem only if you use foobar2000 and have forced APE tags instead of ID3v2.

_Raziel-BG,

Thanks very much. That is exactly what I wanted to know.

Do you also manage album cover art for your fuze? I just read on a recent post that the fuze supports up to 299x299 pixel images.

I'm really liking the fuze. If it had AAC support, it would be perfect (I no longer purchase AAC files, but will need to transcode some that I had already bought).

Do you have a V1 Fuze? If so, checkout rockbox. Its got AAC(+) and no limit on album art jpeg size.

If you have the older version with Rockbox running OK then no problem. No need to transcode, so long as your AACs have no DRM (i.e. they are .m4a not .m4p).

Otherwise, as the Fuze supports lossless FLAC, you could decode the AAC and convert losslessly to FLAC, avoiding transcoding artifacts but retaining tagging etc. This has the disadvantage of higher bitrate (say 600-900 kbps, likely the lower end with Replaygan applied).

Transcoding artifacts are also unlikely to be noticed if you use lossyFLAC (lossyWAV followed by FLAC), perhaps at the portable setting, which will come in at around 350 kbps.

In reality, with conventional lossy encoders, transcoding artifacts will hopefully be rare enough with high enough quality settings on LAME MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, though the usual transcoding health warnings apply. It's when you aim for bitrates of around 128kbps and below that you're in more danger of big audible problems.

No. I don't care much about cover art.



While generally the Fuze (v1) does run Rockbox reasonably well it's still considered as 'unstable'. I myself am keeping an eye on the Rockbox port for the Fuze (LINK) but I'll also wait until it's tested enough and becomes 'stable'. I'm not in a hurry since the DAP provides the most essential features already - ReplayGain, Vorbis/FLAC support and a regular folder playback (not just sorting based on album, genre, artist and such). The Rockbox would bring more extras that would be quite nice but they wouldn't be anything that I desperately need so I can wait.
I'm not advising against installing Rockbox. I'm simply giving you a heads-up.