replaygain tagging

[zounder1]

I am really enjoying the program - it is great and nearly lets me do everything I need to the music with VinylStudio.

The only step is doesn't do it ReplayGain tagging.  Replaygain analyzes the loudness of music and adds tags for Song Replaygain and Album Replaygain.  With these tags I can set my SqueezeBox to playback using Album Replaygain.  This ensures songs between albums are equally loud when playing back.  This eliminates the need to rush to the volume control for albums that are louders or quieter than the previous album.  This is awesome in random play as I never have to adjust the volume on the stereo.

It should be emphasized that ReplayGain does not alter the sound file whatsoever, it just gives tagging that tells the player how many dB to adjust the volume up or down in an album or song to ensure consistent volume levels between tracks and/or albums.

For now, I use FooBar2000 to analyze and insert the ReplayGain tags in FLAC files created by VinylStudio.  It would be nice it you could add ReplayGain analysis and tagging into VinylStudio.  I find it actually would be extremely useful as I find the volume levels between records can be quite significant and this adjusts for it automatically without altering the captured audio.  (It is up to the player and you if you want ReplayGain to be used or not so it can be turned on or off at will.)

You can read more about ReplayGain here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replaygain

I would classify this request as pretty low importance, but it would be nice to see some day!

Cheers.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Yes I know about replay gain, although we prefer the approach of modifying the playback level of the tracks themselves as this works with all players.  The rationale here is that if you don't like it you can tweak whatever settings you used and save the tracks again.  This is a luxury afforded by VinylStudio that most other software does not have available.

Have you tried VinylStudio's Normalise feature?  You will find it in the Graphic Equaliser dialog under Filter Settings.  This works per album-side, rather than per track, but it might come close to what you want.  Also, it does not perform the sophisticated analysis that reply gain does.

[zounder1]

Thanks.  I personally prefer ReplayGain over normalize as my players (SqueezeBox Duet / SqueezeBox Touch) support ReplayGain.  I just prefer minimizing changes to the audio waves as much as possible. 

Though I have to say I really like how Vinyl Studio always keeps the pristine original recording so you can switch back to it at any time.  It really simplifies the whole process by avoiding needing to keep multiple versions of files that a lot of other "solutions" require.  (I'm looking at you Audacity...)  Vinyl Studio has simplified the process of digitizing records so much that it is amazing.  (And enjoyable.)

I'll live with using FooBar2000 to add the ReplayGain metadata tags.

Cheers.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

OK, thanks.  That seems like the best solution for now.  As I say, we'll put supporting the replaygain tag on our todo list.