Misunderstanding ReplayGain...

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

I installed MediaMonkey and analyzed my songs. I had it configured for the recommended 89db level. Im not really sure what the difference between per track and per album is, so I picked per track. In the MediaMonkey library all of the files showed Track Volume that ranged between -12 -> -8db. However when I updated the tags on my Fuze only a handful displayed track level information.

I also heard no discernable difference in the output for the songs that it did work for. I did have replay gain enabled via the per track option with a 0db offset.

I recently got a new pair of headphones (Klipsch Image S4) and because they fit in the ear canal they greatly reduced outside noise. However, this also makes the volume of the music seem much louder to me. I play my music on the lowest volume setting using the normal volume option in the system menu. It is still too loud for me as my ears ring after I listen for even one song.

I’m not sure if the ringing is because these things are lodged in my ears, or because the music is too loud. I however do want to reduce the voulme of all the files on my fuze to around 70db. I’ve tried setting this in mediamonkey and the track volume column in the library updated accordingly. I am unable to write this tag information to the songs on my fuze. When I do try to update the tags it appears to actually go through each file and do ‘something’. Then I try playing some songs and see that in the info pain the track volume is still at the previous value it was when it was analyzed with an 89db reference volume.

So this jist of it all is that mediamonkey isn’t interfacing with my fuze properly and even when a few songs appear do have track volume in their tags, replay gain does seemingly nothing.

If anyone can help me straighten this out I’d greatly appreciate it.

-Bob 

Message Edited by Wigwrm on 01-25-2010 01:00 PM

2

What setting you use as ‘normal’ volume in mediamonkey isn’t transferred to the fuze.  It sees the tags (which tell it the track volume) only.  You would need to edit the replay gain settings on the device itself to make it lower volume.

3

I had similar problems with RG. RG values don’t show when I used ID3v2.3 UTF-16 (my original tag format). It showed up when I switched to v2.4 UTF-8, but since the Fuze can’t show Unicode characters anyway, I converted to v2.3 ISO. Check Track Info; on 2nd page there should a “Track Gain” value. If it’s not there, then the Fuze didn’t recognize the track’s RG setting.

Difference between track & album mode: Google “wiki replay gain”.

To reduce default RG loudness level: Settings | Music | Replay Gain | Pre-Gain. Lower this value to 0dB.

I haven’t seen a way to change RG’s reference 89dB loudness, which makes sense, as you want to keep this a uniform value for everyone. It would defeat the purpose if people have different RG settings with different loudnesses, as that’s the problem in the first place. There is probably a way to reduce/change RG values using MP3Tag’s scripting functions, i.e. “search for numeric value in RG field, reduce value by specified amount, rewrite value”. It’s a hassle, however. The simplest way is probably not to use in-canal earbuds.

Message Edited by TomJensen on 01-25-2010 04:49 PM

4

Replay Gain Explained