Analyze Volume / Replay Gain issues...

[HAL Lives]

Hello All

I live in my various musical genre Playlists and play them Shuffled, so analyze the volume and adjust by Track.

But there are still some noticeable differences in the perceived volume of some of the tracks within the same Playlist when I'm listening.

I've seen Xmedia Recode, and Audio Normalizer by Solar Wind, recommended as highly accurate tools for volume normalizing.

Does anyone have any experience with these products, or can they recommend any others?

I'm on the latest version of MusicBee, 3.1.6590.

Thanks
Paul

[redwing]

But there are still some noticeable differences in the perceived volume of some of the tracks within the same Playlist when I'm listening.

I'm not sure how that can happen. You're not referring to the differences between album gain and track gain, right?

Two things to check:
- If a track already has RG tags, the track gets deselected in the volume analyzer dialog. So make sure all of them get re-analyzed even with prior RG tags that could be inaccurate.
- Check settings tab of tag editor and make sure they have no volume adjustment setting. Also check they have no RVAD (relative volume adjustment) tags using tag inspector.

[HAL Lives]

Hello Redwing

Thank you for your reply, it's much appreciated; all my tracks are adjusted to Track Gain, as I listen to my music in shuffled Playlists, however, something is happening that I don't understand...

I opened one of my Playlists where I've noticed the differences in track volumes and clicked on Tools/Restore Original Volume.

I then went back to Tools/Analyze Volume and applied Track Gain to every track, including checking for Clipping.

I randomly checked some of the tracks, there are 57 in the Playlist, by Right Clicking then going to Edit/Tag Inspector and can see the Replaygain Track Gain and Replaygain Track Peak values assigned.

Then here's where it gets weird... I went to Tools/Tagging Tools/Other 'Files to Edit' Filters/Show Files With No Volume Analysis, and out of the 57 tracks in the Playlist, 22 are shown as having, "No Replaygain Tags."

Right Clicking/Edit/Tag Inspector on each individual track in the list shows me the Replaygain Track Gain and Replaygain Track Peak values.

Do you have any idea what's going on?

Thanks
Paul

[redwing]

Then here's where it gets weird... I went to Tools/Tagging Tools/Other 'Files to Edit' Filters/Show Files With No Volume Analysis, and out of the 57 tracks in the Playlist, 22 are shown as having, "No Replaygain Tags."

Right Clicking/Edit/Tag Inspector on each individual track in the list shows me the Replaygain Track Gain and Replaygain Track Peak values.

Yeah, looks like a bug. I also see some files with RG tags are incorrectly listed there.
But still they play right despite the bug, don't they? Try playing them with replay gain on and off. For me MB applies RG tags properly even for those files.

[HAL Lives]

Hi Redwing

Thanks for the "Bug" update; that really confused the Hell out of me! LOL!

After re-applying Track Gain to my files and going to "Controls" to toggle Replay Gain on and off as you suggested, I discovered I actually had "Smart Gain" selected... I'm assuming "Smart Gain" would override the "Track Gain" set for individual tracks?

Anyway, I selected "Track Gain Only" and the tracks that were obviously "louder" before are now playing back at pretty much the same volume as the rest of my Playlist.

Thanks again for your help!
Paul

[redwing]

I discovered I actually had "Smart Gain" selected

Yep, that explains it.

If you have MB set to smart gain (the default) it will use album gain which allows variation between tracks in an album but tries to keep albums the same overall. But if some of the tracks are missing the album gain value it will use the track gain value so you would possibly notice more of a jump on between the track that had album gain and the next that only had track gain and vice/versa.

[redwing]

One thing unclear to me is smart gain is supposed to use track gain when shuffle is enabled unless playing tracks are grouped by album.

Smart gain will now use Track gain values when the Auto DJ is enabled and now when shuffle is not enabled MB also checks that at least the following track is from the same album before using Album gain values. When shuffle is enabled and grouped by Album then Album gain values will be used, otherwise Track gain values

Does that make sense with your experience?

[HAL Lives]

I can't say that it does... although it might! LOL!

When I inadvertently had "Smart Gain" selected in Controls all I noticed was that Replay Gain, "wasn't working."

However, when I shuffle the affected Playlist I manually go through it and make sure that no two tracks from the same album play back-to-back, which, according to Steve's explanation above, means that "Track Gain" should have been used... doesn't it?!

Now that I have "Track Gain Only" selected in Controls, every track - 60 tracks from 44 albums - plays back at basically the same perceived volume.