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Messages - JZStudios

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1
Questions / How to find songs with custom end times
« on: September 29, 2019, 06:34:50 PM »
I've been setting tracks with "hidden" bonus tracks to end ~4 minutes into a 30 minute track to avoid 20 minutes of silence. I've decided to go through my music and split those out, but when I set custom end times MB displays them as being 4-5 minutes long instead of 20 minutes, so I can't search by time, and I can't find any tag or any way to globally remove the custom end times.

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Questions / Re: About loudness normalization...
« on: September 29, 2019, 12:50:00 AM »
You know what? I'm done.

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Questions / Re: About loudness normalization...
« on: September 28, 2019, 09:39:54 PM »
Sure. Whatever. Like it really matters when you can't possibly hear the less than a nanosecond of minor clipping. I don't mean to get defensive and pissy, which I'm prone to do, but if we set it so there was literally no random clipping spikes, everything else would be incredibly quiet and the noise of the microphone would become much more prominent. Either way I'm not very interested in continuing this non-relevant topic.

You brought up clipping at the recording stage. And since this is a public forum that others may stumble upon to I think it is valid for me to state that these days (using 24bits equipment) allowing for clipping on the recording stage means you are really doing something wrong.
Also, the clipping could get worse and more noticeable when you or somebody else encodes the lossless source to a lossy codec.
But indeed, this is drifting off-topic from your original question, so if you want to continue this, better take it to 'Beyond Musicbee'.

Quote
Now I'm confused. When I set MB to -1dB it gives me an alert that it needs to be set at -.3dB to avoid clipping.

MusicBee tells you there to adjust the value with... Not to set it to...

Could that be the confusion?
I mentioned clipping as a question of how does MB do it, and how much clipping is occurring. Which is relevant to the topic at hand. If it's clipping the top .1%, I don't really care, I'm not going to hear it. If it's clipping 5% or more, that's more substantial and I'd like to know which is the case. As is, MB doesn't tell you how much clipping is occurring.

I don't think so. aside from it not explicitly stating one way or another, as mentioned if I make it -1.3dB it still says it needs to be set -.3dB. It doesn't say if the slider should be at -.3, or to reduce a further -.3dB, but either way it doesn't change the clipping warning.


It just says track -.1dB when I'm set to -1dB. Also of note is that sometimes it'll say album values and track values. The clipping doesn't make much sense anyways. If I have it set to -1dB and digital clipping doesn't occur until over 0dB I don't understand how it apparently has clipping.

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Questions / Re: About loudness normalization...
« on: September 28, 2019, 04:59:58 AM »
When I record music with my friend he sets it so the top 1% clips, and it's no big deal.

At this day and age with pretty much all equipment handling audio at 24 bits with abundant headroom, allowing for any clipping at all is sloppy.

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A point of confusion for me is I set everything to -1dB and some songs say they need -.3dB. If it's set to -1 why am I getting a clipping alert when it says to set it to -.3 to avoid clipping?

What is confusing about this? If a track will clip at MusicBee's -1dB setting, it advices you to lower the level with an extra-2dB to avoid this clipping.
Or maybe you need to explain better what you mean? (Especially the second sentence of your question confuses me a bit)
Sure. Whatever. Like it really matters when you can't possibly hear the less than a nanosecond of minor clipping. I don't mean to get defensive and pissy, which I'm prone to do, but if we set it so there was literally no random clipping spikes, everything else would be incredibly quiet and the noise of the microphone would become much more prominent. Either way I'm not very interested in continuing this non-relevant topic.

Now I'm confused. When I set MB to -1dB it gives me an alert that it needs to be set at -.3dB to avoid clipping. I don't know how to explain that any clearer. That's literally all it is. I'm not convinced it means to drop the dB by another .3dB, because when I do that it and set it to -1.3dB and do it again, it still says it needs to be set to -.3dB.
And maybe I'm really not understanding how this all works because any clipping would be playback, and unless MB induces clipping, it's all pretty much burned into the tracks. Neither Windows nor my AVR are anywhere near max. Setting it to -1dB to me seems like that should negate digital playback clipping.

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Questions / Re: About loudness normalization...
« on: September 27, 2019, 01:03:23 AM »
I think the basic question ought to be: what type of normalisation calculation does MB perform:

- peak normalisation, or
- loudness normalisation

The former just requires a search for the biggest sample in a file, and the replay gain is then merely a simple gain setting to bring that sample to some target level (which might be the FSD for the bit precision of the samples, or some value X dB below that).

The latter requires a more complex computation of 'loudness', which is a psychoacoustic perception, not directly related to a simple peak value.

A track with a single sample at FSD with all other samples zero would give a peak normalisation replay gain of 0dB (with a target of FSD), but would result in a large loudness normalisation replay gain, attempting to produce an average track loudness; that would cause the single FSD sample to be clipped during the playback levelling. Clipping an FSD sample to FSD wouldn't be noticeable clipping, but, for a more real-world track, it might well be, depending on the peak-to-mean ratio of the track.

So, if MB uses a loudness normalisation function, it might also note the peak value in the track, and determine whether the computed replay gain would cause that peak value to clip. Personally, I would want to avoid any samples clipping, so I would hope the clipping detector would operate on that single peak value. This would also be more computationally efficient to implement, as you would not need to perform playback levelling of all the samples in the entire track.

I would not recommend letting digital music clip during recording. Digital clipping simply hits a hard end stop; it is not forgiving of overloading like tape recording is, which results in a soft clipping due to saturation of the magnetic tape.

Unless hard digital clipping is a 'sound' you are going for in the style of music you play (some sub-genres of metal). But you can easily add that effect, to a selectable degree, in post-processing of the recording. Trouble is, you need to set your recording level at the start of recording, anticipating the peak input level.

Hard clipping on CDs came in with the 'loudness wars', which most people agree resulted in horrible-sounding recordings.
Umm... I don't think that answered any of my questions.
As to the recording, it's acoustic guitar and vocals, and the top .1% of random volume spikes being clipped isn't a big deal, and no way in hell are you hearing it. Otherwise the average level is maxed while maintaining the least amount of clipping to keep the dynamics. So if MB is detecting the top .1% of clipping, I don't really care, since you're not going to hear it. Also considering it's really only applying a pre-amp and not dynamic normalization that would kill the dynamics of a song.
But if MB is detecting clipping of say, the top 5%, that's more substantial and would possibly be more noticeable.

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Questions / Re: About loudness normalization...
« on: September 26, 2019, 08:49:15 PM »
I'm going to bring this back since I never noticed it got any responses. I set the volume analysis on my entire library to -1dB. I get that it uses EBU R128 and that essentially finds assumingly the average loudness based on "loudness units" to apply a sort of pre-amp on a per track or per album basis.

What I don't know is if it sets the given value on the slider according to the clipping value, or the average value. I also don't know if the clipping alert applies to every instance of clipping, like the top 1% or the top 5%. When I record music with my friend he sets it so the top 1% clips, and it's no big deal.
A point of confusion for me is I set everything to -1dB and some songs say they need -.3dB. If it's set to -1 why am I getting a clipping alert when it says to set it to -.3 to avoid clipping?

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I can figure out
$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists", display <Artist>, $else display <Album Artist>.
That doesn't work and I couldn't tell you why.

You are close. It only needs to be simpler since the &If statement by itself will already know to display B or C depending on A.
So:

$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",<Artist>,<Album Artist>)

That seems to do it. I can just drop that right in the panel layout customize field without having to make any virtual tags too.

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MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Replace multiple files e.g. entire album
« on: September 26, 2019, 06:29:53 AM »
I'm not even sure if you'd need to refresh MB to play them after, but even if you did it should be easier.
vice versa. you'll need to rewrite file tags by tags from mb database. but such replacement is not safe, 1st make sure that last modification dates are the same for old and new files.
Okay, so then just replacing them in in the file browser and refreshing or rescanning in MB would be quicker.

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Questions / Re: Migrated from WMP and missing features
« on: September 26, 2019, 06:28:17 AM »
I've been using it, but it doesn't work 100% of the time, and it seems to break if you have your playlist shuffled, at least for me. I just play through all artists and shuffle them, so when I'm listening to that and start another song, then go back, it goes back to the song that was previously playing and the position, but the rest of the list seems to be reset in order, and toggling through the shuffle modes doesn't re-shuffle.
You should post the issue on the plugin's thread (in the plugin sub-forum) so the author will have a better chance of seeing it.

I have. Well, on his Reddit post anyways. He's looking into it. I was just giving some.. experience... advice... notes on how it currently works.

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Something like "If album artist is "Various Artists" then display "Artist," else display "Album Artist"."

That shouldn't be very hard.
There is a vast amount of information on, and examples of virtual formulas to be found both on the forum and on the wiki.
Have you given it a shot to try something yourself?
No. I'm not very good at code, and I don't even know if this particular instance actually utilizes code.

Okay, so I've now looked at this; https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Useful_Virtual_Tag_Formulas
which makes me feel pretty confident that what I want should be possible, but I'm still not good enough at code to do it. I can figure out
$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists", display <Artist>, $else display <Album Artist>.
That doesn't work and I couldn't tell you why.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I never noticed until now that you answered my question about normalization, so thanks for that.

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Questions / Show artist instead of album artist for various artist albums
« on: September 25, 2019, 09:35:28 PM »
I can edit the track details on the bottom of the now playing tab to show all the different tags, and it's set up the way I'd use it with pretty much everything. For compilation albums or soundtracks though, it shows "Various Artists" instead of the tracks actual artist. I don't know if the edit thing will actually use code, and if it does I don't exactly know how to use it.
Something like [If <Album Artist> is <Various Artists>, then display <Artist>, else display <Album Artist>]


You can see it says the artist is Bonnie Somerville in the upper right. The thought also occurred to me that I could have it display "Artist" all the time, but then I'd get the long chains of guest artists, and in the case of my slightly oddly tagged classical, it would no longer show the album artist as Beethoven, and instead display whatever orchestra.

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MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Increase Decrease Volume Hotkeys
« on: September 23, 2019, 06:38:50 PM »
Most modern (even most not modern) keyboards, including cheap ones have media controls. My $15 Logitech decade old keyboard has play/pause, mute, vol up, and vol down. I also assigned 2 buttons on my mouse for volume control.

It's really nice having MB hotkeys only work inside MB so I can level out audio sources when I play music over games for example.

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MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Replace multiple files e.g. entire album
« on: September 23, 2019, 06:33:55 PM »
Wouldn't it be easier to just go into your actual file browser and replace them? I'm not even sure if you'd need to refresh MB to play them after, but even if you did it should be easier.

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Questions / Re: WAVs tagging problem
« on: September 23, 2019, 06:31:34 PM »
Also of note... depending on Windows version, it may not support FLAC metadata, I had to download a thing on Win7 to get Windows to read FLAC metadata.

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Questions / Re: Migrated from WMP and missing features
« on: September 23, 2019, 06:20:49 PM »
the plugin already exists:

https://getmusicbee.com/addons/plugins/198/playlist-history/
Bingo. I've been using it, but it doesn't work 100% of the time, and it seems to break if you have your playlist shuffled, at least for me. I just play through all artists and shuffle them, so when I'm listening to that and start another song, then go back, it goes back to the song that was previously playing and the position, but the rest of the list seems to be reset in order, and toggling through the shuffle modes doesn't re-shuffle.

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