Replay Gain: A how to informational

MP3 players Sansa Clip | Clip+
1

What is it?

Replay Gain is a method for keeping the perceived volume level constant during playback of diverse content.  Typically, Albums are mixed and targeted to differing average volume levels.  During playback in shuffle mode there can be wide differences in the track output volume, causing the user to make frequent corrections to the volume level.

Sansa’s Replay Gain is a method whereby average volume playback level is kept consistent automatically.

The difference in the volume level vs. a reference (typically 89dB) is stored in the track metadata fields and is used by the Sansa to adjust the volume control to produce a uniform level.  It should be noted that our implementation does not modify the actual music samples.  It extracts the level adjustment in decibels (dB) from track metadata and applies an adjustment to the output volume control.

Software on the user’s computer analyzes the tracks to produce the Replay Gain values for embedding in the metadata.  The Sansa implementation follows the 2001 proposed Replay Gain standard which is detailed at: 

http://www.replaygain.org/

More information on ReplayGain can be found on Wikipedia at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain

The Sansa’s implementation was tested to work for all of its supported non-DRM formats (MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC) using MediaMonkey.  MediaMonkey is a free media manager application which can be downloaded at: 

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Replay Gain for DRM Protected tracks (ie Rhapsody / Napster/ Netlibrary/ Audible) as well as SanDisk SlotRadio content is not supported. 

The subscription sites may apply their own track leveling.

SanDisk SlotRadio content has been volume leveled in advance at a reference of 89 dB.

How do I use Replay Gain?

On your Computer:
First you need to analyze the tracks in your library.  Download the MediaMonkey software and add your Music collection to the Manager. 

Configure the MediaMonkey “Volume Leveling” options under Tools>Options>Volume Leveling.  You can specify to also analyze the Album volume (otherwise known as “Audiophile Volume” ) when doing the Track Analysis. “Album volume” computes an average correction for all the tracks that comprise an album. Album Gain is supported by the Sansa Device as well as the Track Gain method.

Select your music files and then select “Tools> Analyze Volume”. This will perform the volume level analysis based on the options you have set up.  It will write the Replay Gain values to the ID3 tag for MP3, Vorbis Comments for OGG or FLAC, or WMA header for WMA content.  This action can take a long time depending on the size of your collection.   It’s best to run the program overnight to do a large collection.  You do not need to “Level Track Volume” which will apply the correction to MP3 files’ data.

Note:  Sansa Devices do not support APEv2 tags used by MP3Gain.

On the Player:
Once your files have been analyzed you can transfer them to the Sansa Player. 
To enable/ disable Replay Gain:  select Music Options>Replay Gain.  Select the Mode to be “Song”, “Album”, or “Off”.  The Off setting will not apply any corrections to the volume level regardless of the Replay Gain values found. If Album mode is selected but Album Gain values are not present, Track Gain values will be used if available.

There is a “ Pre-Gain ” setting which allows you to adjust the overall Playback Volume level upward to compensate for the “average” level of your library’s track adjustment.  For example, if your collection is mainly classical or soft songs, you should use a Pre-Gain of 0 dB, since the average level is likely to be close to 89 dB.  For Hard Rock / Hip Hop collections, the Replay Gain values will be more negative, (meaning the song is above the 89dB target) like -8 dB. In this case, higher Pre-Gain level such as 4.5 dB can be used. You can compensate the overall gain level upward in 1.5 db steps up to a maximum of +12 db.  Pre-Gain is NOT applied to tracks that have no Replay Gain values available. Pre Gain is helpful for matching Replay Gain adjusted content with Rhapsody or Napster Protected Content that may be both present on the player.

Viewing the Replay Gain values on the Sansa:
You can conveniently view the Replay Gain values for your currently playing track by accessing the Music options (down arrow) and scrolling to the second page of the “ Track Info ” screen.  If there is no Replay Gain value present these items will not be shown

Message Edited by slotmonsta on 11-17-2009 10:38 AM

2

I assume in the above I can read CLIP for FUZE.

I have an MP3 file, that has been through mediamonkey, and clip is showing a Track gain of 3.38dB.  Yet if whilst playing I change “Replay Gain Mode” between OFF, SONG, ALBUM, I perceive no difference in volume.  If I change “PreGain” from 0-12dB with “Replay Gain” on SONG, I still get no difference in volume.  What am I doing wrong?

3

Same stuff with me. I already analize all my libraby and update my clip+ but still the replay gain don’t do any difference with the volume. What’s up with that?? It took me a entire night doing that just for nothing. :S

4

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

Please support other players such as Foobar2000 and the firmware has a bug fix necessary. The tags for Foobar2000 be misinterpreted and lead to values such as -45.03db in firmware version V01.01.05F!

ReplayGain values in foobar2000:
Track Gain +4.93dB
Album Gain +5.64db

Sansa Clip+ values:
Track Gain: -45.70db
Album Gain: -44.36db

When will there be a fix for?
There are also other errors.
http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clipplus&thread.id=1532

The information will be followed after TXXX (User defined text information) frames of the keywords ‘replaygain_track_gain’, ‘replaygain_track_peak’, ‘replaygain_album_gain’ and ‘replaygain_album_peak’ stored.

http://h.imagehost.org/0793/foobar2000-gain.png

The advantage of Foobar2000 is, all the ReplayGain values can be read as a person and the user has a better control.

A look at the features and plug-ins worth it.

5

Thank you for the instructions. I processed the files as described and moved them to the Clip+. With Replay Gain disabled everything works fine. It also appears to work with Album gain. With Song gain enabled, when the current song finishes the display advances to the next song and does not show that is is paused but the song does not play nor does the elapsed time advance. I am unable to skip to the next song. I have to turn off the Clip+ to reset it. When I turn it back on and disable Replay Gain then all is well again. Have I done something wrong? Might there be a bug in the firmware in this area? Thank you in advance…

Message Edited by wreinert on 12-13-2009 10:12 AM

Message Edited by wreinert on 12-16-2009 07:22 AM

6

I’ve found a very strange bug. It only occurs on RG values lager than zero db and smaller than ten db.  

If i apply a RG value of lager or equal than 10 db it is recognized correctly by the player. if it is in the range mentioned above, it substracts about 40 or 50 dB from the original value. WTF?  

It also reads the value lower than zero db correctly.  

what i found is, that the clip does apply RG values to the volume. If you change the RG settings you have to go back to the home menu, and click yourself to the files in question. Seems to be in the software. 

but please fix this bogous RG readings… 

btw, the rg values were applied via Foobar2000 in MSC mode (if that helps)

7

I have also had a problem with some tags from Foobar2000; a tag of “+0.61” is read by the Clip+ as “-49.39”.

I followed the instructions from this thread and removed the “+” sign:

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&message.id=23962

The Clip+ now reads the Replay Gain as “2070.61” and, of course, much too loud. I inserted a space where the “+” had been (" 0.61") and the Clip+ reads it correctly.

I installed Media Monkey and it does appear to write correct tags; I really like Foobar2000 and I don’t like having to install another program.

8

I just posted about the same problem Wreinert. I wonder if this is a widespread problem or not. All i know is that it’s very frustrating.

9

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:

10

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?

11

@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.

12

@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.

13

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.

14

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.

15

@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.

17

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:

18

@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.

19

@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)

20

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

21

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