Discussion:
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Managing Loudness in a Music Library
pablolie
2016-11-10 23:23:47 UTC
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I was curious if any of you manipulate gain parameters to keep loudness
levels even across your music library, or not, and just live with stuff
the way it is.

Personally, I leave classical music alone. Most of it I have ripped with
dbPoweramp[1], and leave it alone.

With jazz, I could live with leaving it alone, but I have played around
with MP3Gain and some other tools to manage levels across playlists.

With popular music like R&B and salsa - it wouldn't be much of a problem
if you acquired the CDs in the same decade they were produced, I think.
But start mixing things up, and playlists become very uneven[2]. Hence
I have used MP3Gain on an album by album basis, although my library
(wihich is very large) is quite inconsistent.

So I wonder if anyone uses a tool that evens out levels library-wide?
How do you handle it? Just curious.

...paul

[1] It seems to me that dbPoweramp has upped its output levels with new
versions. I have re-ripped some albums, and upon comparing my first rip
with the most recent one, there seems to be a loudness increase. I have
not dabbled with the advanced DSP parameters in dbPoweramp ever, which I
think allow for some output level settings.

[2] The particular culprit is: you have a few CDs from a certain artist
you bought back in the 80s. Now you discover that Amazon has re-issued
some albums from that artist that you missed. You buy them as an MP3
album. The loudness difference between these new ones and the original
CD rips will be brutal. That said, Amazon has done a great job of
digitizing some hard to find 80s/90s albums. In some cases, they sound
(IMHO) markedly better than the original release ADD/DDD CDs, because
some of them sounded ugh (and prolly gave digital a bad name), but yeah,
the current heavy handed approach to loudness prevails. Hence... how to
best manage?



...pablo
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Apesbrain
2016-11-11 05:41:07 UTC
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Smart Gain has always worked well for me. How are you applying
ReplayGain tags to your files?


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pablolie
2016-11-11 05:53:55 UTC
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Post by Apesbrain
Smart Gain has always worked well for me. How are you applying
ReplayGain tags to your files?
I run MP3Gain and normalize to a level that doesn't report clipping. I
think I have it set up to 91dB. Unless it report clipping at that level.
I do dream about an automatically normalized/enforced loudness level
across my library.



...pablo
Server: Virtual Machine (on VMware Workstation 12) running Ubuntu 16.04
+ LMS 7.9
System: SB Touch --optical->- Benchmark DAC2HGC --AnalysisPlus Oval
Copper XLR->- NAD M22 Power Amp --AnalysisPlus Black Mesh Oval->- Totem
Element Fire
Other Rooms: 2x SB Boom; 1x SB Radio; 1x SB Classic-> NAD D7050 -> Totem
DreamCatcher + Velodyne Minivee Sub
Computer audio: workstation --USB->- audioengine D1 -> Grado
PS500e/Shure 1540
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Julf
2016-11-11 08:09:34 UTC
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"Quiet" albums will still sound much quieter than loud ones.
It might also be an issue of compression (as opposed to just level
adjustment). A compressed track might show the same dB level, but sound
much louder.



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fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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JJZolx
2016-11-11 08:12:46 UTC
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I add ReplayGain tags to all FLAC files, but use it only for background
listening. It's not terrible, but it's far from perfect. I find that I
still need to adjust volume levels occasionally.


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slartibartfast
2016-11-11 10:40:14 UTC
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Post by pablolie
I run MP3Gain and normalize to a level that doesn't report clipping. I
think I have it set up to 91dB. Unless it reports clipping at that
level. I do dream about an automatically normalized/enforced loudness
level across my library.
And Smartgain doesn't work for me - it does not normalize levels in my
library when I put them on a playlist (and I don't mix music styles on
playlists). Not sure what the dB level difference in Smartgain is, but
my guess it it doesn't corect to a degree more than 2dB (or that's what
it sounds like). "Quiet" albums will still sound much quieter than loud
ones.
Have you checked the album and track replaygain values of albums you
have issues with?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk




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drmatt
2016-11-11 08:20:29 UTC
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The state of the art is to apply a uniform replaygain to your source
files. If that's not perfect (it isn't) then you are only left with
manual intervention. I've just thrown metaflac at each album one by one
with its default target loudness level of about -3db peak I think. Works
well enough to get rid of the gross differences for me.

The only times I've noted major discrepancies is when stumbling across
some files that haven't been processed..

I would agree this is hard to get right on exceptionally dynamic
material like classical, however, where a more simplistic peak level
adjustment is more appropriate, imho.




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drmatt
2016-11-11 11:24:12 UTC
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One point dawns on me. Unless you've written the gain tags into the
files LMS won't apply any corrections. You have to have processed and
written the gain tags into the source files first. Smart Gain just reads
and applies those.




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Roland0
2016-11-11 13:43:35 UTC
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Post by drmatt
One point dawns on me. Unless you've written the gain tags into the
files LMS won't apply any corrections. You have to have processed and
written the gain tags into the source files first. Smart Gain just reads
and applies those.
But you did say you've used mp3gain. As above, check the tags.
mp3gain and aacgain directly modify the audio data (they use APE tags
only to store information for their own undo functionality), and do not
use Replay Gain tags. This means that SmartGain etc. does nothing with
such files (unless Replay Gain ID3 tags have been added with some other
method (e.g. during encoding by lame) - in this case, they might
actually conflict (however, since ReplayGain isnt't part of the MP3
spec, this rarely happens, as most players ignore it. LMS, however, most
likely will use MP3 ID3 Replay Gain tags)).

Note that using these different approaches (metadata/direct audio data
modification/both) for different file types may also lead to unexpected
results.

See also 'here' (http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain)



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drmatt
2016-11-11 15:11:06 UTC
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Mp3gain *can* also adjust the Id3 tags and leave the audio data alone. I
know it used to default to modifying the audio data but I believe it
defaults to the opposite behaviour now.




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pablolie
2016-11-11 16:27:09 UTC
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Mp3gain *can* also adjust the Id3 tags and leave the audio data alone..
From what I have observed it merely adds 2 tags MP3GAIN_MINMAX and
MP3GAIN_UNDO.

According to
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Automatic_Volume_Adjustment, LMS
does recognize and act on MP3 tags. I certainly can hear a difference.

My problem remains that fact that, with nearly 4,000 albums in my
collection, some sort of automatic analysis & correction tool would be
nice.



...pablo
Server: Virtual Machine (on VMware Workstation 12) running Ubuntu 16.04
+ LMS 7.9
System: SB Touch --optical->- Benchmark DAC2HGC --AnalysisPlus Oval
Copper XLR->- NAD M22 Power Amp --AnalysisPlus Black Mesh Oval->- Totem
Element Fire
Other Rooms: 2x SB Boom; 1x SB Radio; 1x SB Classic-> NAD D7050 -> Totem
DreamCatcher + Velodyne Minivee Sub
Computer audio: workstation --USB->- audioengine D1 -> Grado
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slartibartfast
2016-11-11 17:03:03 UTC
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Post by pablolie
From what I have observed it merely adds 2 tags MP3GAIN_MINMAX and
MP3GAIN_UNDO. There are also REPLYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN and
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_MAX atgs - but I have to admit I am not sure if those
were introduced by MP3GAIN.
According to
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Automatic_Volume_Adjustment, LMS
does recognize and act on MP3 tags. I certainly can hear a difference.
My problem remains that fact that, with nearly 4,000 albums in my
collection, some sort of automatic analysis & correction tool would be
nice.
I add replaygain tags using db power amp. I have just listened to
"First we take Manhattan-Jennifer Warnes" with a track gain of +3.28dB
followed by "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song-Flaming Lips" with a track gain of
-11.03dB. That is 14.31dB difference but the playback volume was pretty
close. Why not take a couple of your albums and remove the mp3gain tags
and just leave the replaygain tags and see if it makes a difference.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk




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Roland0
2016-11-11 18:54:38 UTC
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Post by pablolie
From what I have observed it merely adds 2 tags MP3GAIN_MINMAX and
MP3GAIN_UNDO. There are also REPLYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN and
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_MAX atgs - but I have to admit I am not sure if those
were introduced by MP3GAIN.
May well be introduced by the encoder (lame does)
Post by pablolie
According to
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Automatic_Volume_Adjustment, LMS
does recognize and act on MP3 tags. I certainly can hear a difference.
It works with MP3 ID3 tags, but I'm not so sure about MP3 APE tags
(which are written by default by mp3gain)
Post by pablolie
My problem remains that fact that, with nearly 4,000 albums in my
collection, some sort of automatic analysis & correction tool would be
nice.
The combination mp3gain / aacgain (direct audio data modification, no
tags) and metaflac (tags) works well for me.



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drmatt
2016-11-12 07:57:47 UTC
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You could write a module for LMS that can calculate replaygain on files
before it plays them, but you'd need a fairly beefy system to use it
live. Better off doing an offline sweep of all your files and
calculating and applying it that way.




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Mnyb
2016-11-12 08:20:21 UTC
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You can use for example foobar2000 and redo all RG tags in one sweep (
backup first !!)

You can try the nev EBU R128 algorithm , that should match human hearing
slightly better ?

And let the encoder pick reference level ? The algorithm needs headroom
to work so level has to somewhat quiet to be able to match the loudest
with the softest tracks.

And you need both track gain and album gain.

smartgain switches between the two . Album gain preserves differences (
does not level them ) within an album when you listening in album mode
gapless playback of Sargent pepper or any classical work would break
horribly then .
But the next album will be as loud as th one before .

Track gain is for playlists , when you pile up 200 tracks in a row .



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Mnyb
2016-11-12 08:24:54 UTC
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You can toggle off the smart functionality if you have albums like dance
or pop compilations that you really want to level anyway ?

Maybe that's what OP is hearing ? Albums like best of 90's would
actually be better without smart gain feature , so just turn that of
when listening to such album but keep the replay gain function on .



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cliveb
2016-11-12 10:18:47 UTC
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If you have both MP3GAIN and REPLAYGAIN tags then they may well be
fighting each other. The latter will be used and applied by LMS, the
former will represent the real adjustment made to the audio data. But
once the audio data is adjusted you don't want LMS to apply any gain
adjustment..
Provided the replaygain tags are calculated AFTER the mp3gain processing
has been done, there shouldn't be a problem. Mp3gain uses the replaygain
algorithm to calculate the adjustments it makes, so in principle after
mp3gain has been applied, any subsequently calculated replaygain tags
should be close to 0db. (That said, mp3gain only works in 1.5dB steps,
so there will still be some minor residual adjustments).

And finally, a comment about mp3gain. Many posts on this thread have
stated that mp3gain changes the actual audio data. It doesn't. What it
does do is amend the playback level header on every mp3 frame - this is
the thing that tells the mp3 decoder what level to set the output of the
frame. Mp3gain also (optionally) adds undo tags that it can use to reset
the playback level headers on the mp3 frames back to their original
values.



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