Volume Adjustment always used unintentionally

[SinusStudios]

Hello forum,
i have an issue with MusicBee 3.0.6132 (latest) where no matter what i set for
dynamically normalize volume of streams and normalize volume of tracks with replay gain tracks
MusicBee will always use the replay tag gain, no matter what settings or any combination.
I'm only using normal Windows Audio, no external device.
It's a hard issue for me because for some reason, most of my 200.000 song library got it's replay gain tags set to +100% (maybe some bug in an old build, i have no clue) so every second song or more is distorted and too loud.
I simply want MusicBee to completely ignore the replay gain tags as i don't need them at all.
[No, i'm not using any equalizer, or windows stuff, i've tested it multiple times and it's definitely the replay gain tags.]

I'm thankful for any tipps or theorys what to try out, but as i don't know the reason for the wrong replay tag values, i'd like to avoid having to set all 200.000+ replay tags (would take hours as well).

Regards, Daniel =)

[phred]

If the replay gain tags exist MB will not ignore them. The best option would be to remove them in order to restore the original volume. This can easily be achieved by selecting the tracks in question and going to Tools > Restore Original Volume. I would test with a few tracks/albums first before clearing your entire library.

[psychoadept]

Actually, you can turn the relay gain tags off (tell MusicBee to ignore them), I think from the controls menu.  You can also easily remove them all by using the remove tags command from the tools menu (what phred said).

[hiccup]

@SinusStudios,

Are you sure that they are replaygain tags, and not relative volume adjustment tags?
The latter won't be bypassed when replaygain is set to off.
You will have to remove those tags (rvad or rva2), which is not difficult, as explained earlier.


edit:
I believe this would only apply to mp3's.
Trying it out, it looks like MusicBee doesn't write tags for relative volume adjustment for flac files.

[phred]

Actually, you can turn the relay gain tags off (tell MusicBee to ignore them), I think from the controls menu.  

Well look at that! I was checking under Tools when I should've been looking under Controls.
Controls > Replay Gain Off.
I stand corrected!

[CritterMan]

If I ran into an issue with bad replay gain tags, I would probably just back up my library and then rescan all of the tracks to write new ones.

[SinusStudios]

@everyone I'm sorry! I didn't actually know that there was a difference between replay gain and volume adjustment because i don't use those at all ^^'

After testing i can confirm it's the volume adjustment that's breaking my playback.
For some reason it got set to +100% at some point for the majority of my library as it can be seen here:



My replay gain setting is already set to off under Controls -> Replay Gain Off

I've tried the restore original volume option, but i'd have to tick all tracks manually (they're unchecked for some reason when i select all and open up the restore volume menu) which is simply impossible with a large library.

The only viable option seems to use the Remove Tags function that @hiccup mentioned.
There are only two issues left:

- the Remove tag menu loads indefinitely when trying to remove tags from missing tracks

Because i move around music a lot, files start to become missing in MusicBee, but i don't want to remove them from my library because they are part of playlists that i fix using ListFix() regulary. I'm not sure if i'll be good when fix all playlists, remove all missing tracks from the library and then do the tag stuff as i don't really know how MusicBee handles track removal from the library and such.

- most of the times no rvad or rva2 tags show up in the Remove tags menu

I've tried this on numerous 'broken' but not missing mp3's across my library and only rarely the option to remove those types of tags show up. I've analyzed the files by tag codec and what not but couldn't find any pattern or logic behind it.

Screenshot of the Remove Tags menu:

In the normal tag editor it looks the same as in the previous screenshot above; the volume adjustment is on maximum.

So far thanks to all the tipps and advice, i really hope i'll be able to fix this.
By the way the reason i'm not using any replay gain tags and / or volume adjustment is because MusicBee is only my music management solution while i DJ with VirtualDJ which in my opinion works great with MusicBee when you set MB to use M3U playlists which you can easily use in VDJ. It will simply figure out the best gain by itself, so i never worry about it.

Regards, Daniel =)

[redwing]

1. Create a virtual field with the following formula:

<Relative Volume Adjustment>

2. Add the field to the main panel column and sort by the field.

3. Select all files having a value in that field.

4. Open tag editor with those files selected, go to settings tab, tick "volume adjustment" with slider to none, and hit save.

[SinusStudios]

1. Create a virtual field with the following formula:

<Relative Volume Adjustment>

2. Add the field to the main panel column and sort by the field.

3. Select all files having a value in that field.

4. Open tag editor with those files selected, go to settings tab, tick "volume adjustment" with slider to none, and hit save.

Thanks a lot! This fixed my problem =)
Exactly 154.656 files, i'm surprised it only took like 10 minutes to complete.

Regards Daniel