Permanent volume adjustment portable devices

[mattbaker88]

I have a number of MP3 tracks in my library which have been run through the volume analysis and have the resulting replay gain tags written. When I move these to my portable device through MusicBee the volume is not permanently adjusted in the resulting MP3s.
I am aware this feature was removed for the local libraries, but thought that it should still work for portable devices.

I have tried this with FLAC files as well and no volume levelling appears to take place, even during the encoding to MP3.
As a test I have been comparing the source file's volume (FLAC and MP3) with the resulting MP3, both using another media player. There is no difference even with replay gains of about -10dB. These tracks played in MusicBee are loads quieter. The same for when I play the tracks in my car (which doesn't support replay gain tags). The track volumes jump all over the place.

Source file tags: http://i61.tinypic.com/5pigzt.png
Converted file tags: http://i58.tinypic.com/2qnxldw.png

These are my current settings: http://i58.tinypic.com/2v1kuf8.png

Any ideas?

Thanks
Matt

[Steven]

i dont have any time to investigate but i can confirm the permant volume adjustment is still applied when synching to a device as long as you have the "level volume" setting ticked in the synch settings dialog, except when no file conversion takes place and its not an mp3 file ie. synching flac -> flac will only save replay gain tags, but flac -> mp3 or mp3 -> mp3 should be fine

[redwing]

In your case, you will need to tick "convert all files" option to level existing mp3 files as well.
As for the RG tags, I noticed converted files for some reason retain the same RG tags as the original when only volume leveling is ticked without converting to another format (@Steven, those tags should be discarded after conversion). If you redo volume analysis for those files you will verify that their volumes have been leveled.

[mattbaker88]

Sorry guys; I made a mistake!

After importing the files into Audacity, I can see the MP3 files for the portable device have a much smaller amplitude: http://i57.tinypic.com/29n9t21.png

The thing that threw me was that I was using Media Player Classic as the comparison for playback volume and this was playing both the portable device version and the original at the same volume. Turns out volume normalisation was enabled in the player - doh!

Still don't understand why the volume jumps around when playing on my car sound system. I'll wipe the memory stick and start again from scratch using fresh files.

Also, I can confirm that if I select "convert all files" the replay gain tags get removed and the volume levelling is applied permanently to the output file. However, with the other conversion options selected, the replay gain tags remain, even though the volume has still been permanently adjusted on the output file.

Thanks both for your help and good idea about just analysing the portable device MP3 to see if it has been adjusted correctly.