Replay Gain: A how to informational

Kabel wrote:

Media Monkey in my opinion, a not particularly flexible program for managing music files and not very well configurable.

What is it that you can’t do with  Mediamonkey that you do with foobar, asides from tweak the way that it looks? They both play music, they both are capable of ripping and converting it…what else do you like to do with foobar?

@marvin_martian wrote:

Read the thread people…the Replay Gain for the Sansas is designed to work with MediaMonkey, not foobar2000. The two programs clearly differ in how they implement ReplayGain data…so if you’re doing your ReplayGain analysis with foobar, don’t get upset when it doesn’t work.:wink:

 

Those of you who are using Mediamonkey, if it’s not cooperating with you, then perhaps there is a bug of some sort. There should be a firmware update sometime in the next month or so,so let’s keep the discussion alive so the devs know to address it.:smiley:

 

 

Nice to hear. The behavior is really annoying.

A user to pin a program, it can not be.

@marvin_martian wrote:


@kabel wrote:

Media Monkey in my opinion, a not particularly flexible program for managing music files and not very well configurable.


What is it that you can’t do with  Mediamonkey that you do with foobar, asides from tweak the way that it looks? They both play music, they both are capable of ripping and converting it…what else do you like to do with foobar?

Just the scripting capabilities of Masstagers are a good reason.
The user can Foobar2000very, very well adapted to his needs.

Kabel wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:


@kabel wrote:

Media Monkey in my opinion, a not particularly flexible program for managing music files and not very well configurable.


What is it that you can’t do with  Mediamonkey that you do with foobar, asides from tweak the way that it looks? They both play music, they both are capable of ripping and converting it…what else do you like to do with foobar?


Just the scripting capabilities of Masstagers are a good reason.
The user can Foobar2000very, very well adapted to his needs.

I never did any of that when I had foobar…never needed to do any mass tagging. When I switched computers last week, I opted not to add foobar to the new machine, because I wasn’t doing anything with it that I couldn’t do with Mediamonkey. It was nice to check out the detailed info foobar gave you , like size of your collection, avg. bitrate, what codec,etc., but really I wasn’t doing anything with it but play music and convert an album here and there. If I need to fix tags I have MP3Tag.

But, to each his own…you have uses for more of its capabilities than I do, and that’s fine.

I have only used Mediamonkey briefly so I may have missed some things, but quick impressions so far:

Cannot drag and drop a file or multiple files from a file browser (windows explorer, free commander, etc.)

Have not been successful getting wavpack files recognized in MM (apparently an older winamp plugin may work)

Very simple to copy codecs into Foobar directory - no installation necessary - wavpack, neroaacenc, neroaacdec, ac3, ogg, etc.

The ogg encoder in MM is extremly slow; I use a tweaked ogg codec in Foobar and it is approx 4x as fast.

MM installation directory over 30 MB’s, my Foobar directory (portable, no install) is 10 MB’s.

@marvin_martian wrote:

Read the thread people…the Replay Gain for the Sansas is designed to work with MediaMonkey, not foobar2000. The two programs clearly differ in how they implement ReplayGain data…so if you’re doing your ReplayGain analysis with foobar, don’t get upset when it doesn’t work.:wink:

 

Those of you who are using Mediamonkey, if it’s not cooperating with you, then perhaps there is a bug of some sort. There should be a firmware update sometime in the next month or so,so let’s keep the discussion alive so the devs know to address it.:smiley:

 

 

Thanks for the heads up. However, as a first time Sansa owner, nowhere on the manual, or on their site does it say that Media Monkey should be used for Replaygain. The only reason I was able to find out about how to use Replaygain was after a Google search, and I found the info here in this thread. And yes after using Media Monkey and following all instructions, Replaygain simply does not work with my Clip+. The ball was dropped somewhere. Hopefully there will be a fix soon.

You may want to try MP3Gain, which provides similar functionality.  The difference is, MP3Gain imbeds the gain changes into the files themselves (which is reversible/changeable), and so does not require any special software in the playing of the files (and so the gain changes are playable wherever).

Given all the headaches from ReplayGain, first with the Fuze, now with the Clip+, I think they would have been better off not implementing it, and improving the custom EQ’s functionality instead. :stuck_out_tongue:

@marvin_martian wrote:
Given all the headaches from ReplayGain, first with the Fuze, now with the Clip+, I think they would have been better off not implementing it, and improving the custom EQ’s functionality instead. :stuck_out_tongue:

When it works, it is really good. Now that I have done some further testing,I am confident I have the replaygain issue resolved…for my Clip+.

As has been stated previously, MM writes replaygain values that the Clip+ reads correctly.

For those using Foobar2000, the only issue is when replaygain values are positive (and apparently only values between 0.00 and +10.00, but I have not tested this)  and FB includes a plus sign preceeding the value. Simply removing the plus sign is not sufficient (the volume goes to max); however, replacing the plus sign with a space works correctly. Also, it appears to make no difference whether the tag is ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 - the Clip+ reads both properly.

@andied wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:
Given all the headaches from ReplayGain, first with the Fuze, now with the Clip+, I think they would have been better off not implementing it, and improving the custom EQ’s functionality instead. :stuck_out_tongue:


When it works, it is really good. Now that I have done some further testing,I am confident I have the replaygain issue resolved…for my Clip+.

 

As has been stated previously, MM writes replaygain values that the Clip+ reads correctly.

 

For those using Foobar2000, the only issue is when replaygain values are positive (and apparently only values between 0.00 and +10.00, but I have not tested this)  and FB includes a plus sign preceeding the value. Simply removing the plus sign is not sufficient (the volume goes to max); however, replacing the plus sign with a space works correctly. Also, it appears to make no difference whether the tag is ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 - the Clip+ reads both properly.

Nice to hear! :slight_smile:

Are there any side effects in Foobar?

A small data query here:
‘GREATER %replaygain_track_gain% 0’ - 14.5% (10000 files)

Hi everybody, I registered because my own Clip+ is behaving the same way with replaygain_*_gain tags that have the “+9.99” format.  I hope this is helpful and that the people at Sandisk might see it.  Anyway, I can confirm:

  1. that replaygain_*_gain tags in the “+9.99” format cause the player to read incorrect values (eg, “+9.99” yields “-40.01” )

  2. that deleting the leading “+” (eg, “9.99” ) causes the player to read a very large value > 2000,

  3. that replacing the leading “+” with a " " (eg, " 9.99" ) causes the player to read the correct value,

AND 3) that adding a leading zero (eg, “+09.99” or “09.99” ) will also cause the player to read the correct value.

Almost forgot.  This all applies only to ID3 tags.  OGG is okay.  Haven’t tried FLAC.

Message Edited by DCMC on 12-20-2009 07:51 PM

Message Edited by DCMC on 12-20-2009 07:57 PM

Just thought I’d chime in with an update. I’ve been in contact with Sandisk customer service over this Replaygain problem, and after trying some of their suggestions to update firmware, reset & format, we’ve come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with my Clip+. Instead of sending it back to Sandisk, I decided to return the player back to the store I bought it from since it was still inside the 30-day return policy.

After charging the new unit, and adding some songs, once again Replaygain simply does not work properly. In either song or album mode, a few songs will play fine, and then the player will just freeze when a new track is to begin. You cannot skip to the next or previous track either. If i reboot, a few songs will play fine and then it freezes again. This happens on songs that are on both the internal memory and my SD micro card. My files are a mix of MP3’s and WMA’s, and i would guess that wouldn’t be the problem since the Clip+ accepts both type of files. When Replaygain is in off mode, everything works fine.

Sandisk says that there is no problem in their opinion with Replaygain on the Clip+, but in my experience I would beg to differ. Could it be that the problem is with Media Monkey? Hopefully there will be a fix soon.

Message Edited by bloozjr on 12-23-2009 12:55 PM

I am not persuaded that the Clip+ is at fault for the ReplayGain issues I have seen posted. The only issue I have experienced (and have read a few other posts with similar problems) is with specific programs (Foobar2000) and the format that is used to write the ReplayGain values, and once understood, this issue is trivial to correct.

@bloozjr: The fact that your second Clip+ has the same problems suggests to me there is a problem with your tags, or at least the way the Clip+ reads them. Is there a particular file that causes the freeze, or file type? I would try to isolate the problem, if possible, and would create a test folder, with a few mp3’s, and see if they play through properly, another folder for wma files and see if they play, then another folder to mix them. Perhaps use MP3Tag to check the tags and make sure they do not have any unusual entries.

Thanks andied I’ll try what you recommended. However, after reading the problems that the Fuze had with Replaygain, I suspect the Clip+ has the same problem. At least the ones I buy do:)

Thanks andied I’ll try what you recommended. However, after reading the problems that the Fuze had with Replaygain, I suspect the Clip+ does as well. At least the ones I buy do:)

Yet further reason why I like MP3Gain–works every time!

@miikerman wrote:
Yet further reason why I like MP3Gain–works every time!

How do you get MP3Gain to work. I tried it and first of all it writes Ape tags which the Clip+ doesn’t read properly (if at all), and secondly it does the same as Foobar2000 on positive values, and writes a “+” at the beginning of the ReplayGain value, and the Clip+ subtracts 50 from this value, so a RG value of +2.0 becomes -48.  What am I missing?

Sorry, I’m not following you–are you talking about MP3Gain?  Or ReplayGain?  I was referring to MP3Gain …

I am referring to using MP3Gain to set the replaygain values. MP3Gain uses Apev2 tags and I do not see how to change it. MP3Gain also writes a plus (+) sign at the beginning of the replaygain value ,if it is a positive value, and the Clip+ doesn’t know how to handle it.

Merry Christmas :stuck_out_tongue:

The problem with MP3Gain is, it does not work via tags but modifies the file directly. The tags are only a backup information to be able to restore the original file. And it only works on MP3 files, as the name suggests.

I have a slightly different problem with my clip+ and replay gain. The replaygain values are listed correctly in both foobar2k and clip+, but there is no change in volume when switching between the off/song/album modes and the files with replay gain tags are clearly louder than files that had the replaygain applied to the data (lossy). 

Before someone says it’s foobar’s fault, the replaygain values were done with the official encoder (1.2.1b) via the --replay-gain switch.

If the clip+ has problems reading those tags it simply means replay gain is not implemented correctly.

And what’s more interesting, i went and installed mediamonkey and scanned the same track with foobar, official and mediamonkey. My results:

The only difference between foobar replay gain tags and official tags is one additional tag namely REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS, which is set to 89.0dB per default (and the fact i scanned in track mode while the official encoder scans in album mode). Everything else is the same.

All 3 files’ replay gain tracks are recognized by the clip+ correctly

All 3 files sound louder than my mp3 version of the same song (which has the track gain applied) in off/song/album mode

With all 3 files, there is no volume difference between off/song/album mode

My clip+ firmware is V01.01.05F (don’t know if it’s the newest, the updater doesn’t like me (click me) (win7 x64))

foobar:

foobar tags

official tags:

  official tags

Now, let’s see how MM tags look like:

  media monkey tags

After comparing the tags, you can clearly see which program behaves incorrectly - MediaMonkey, not foobar.

Now let’s assume MediaMonkey’s replay gain tags do work and i’m an exception.

This means that to be able to use the whole potential of my player, i am forced to use a specific program. That was initially one of the reasons i decided against buying an apple product, but now i am being told there is no other way (at least atm) around it again - not good.