Adding Replay Gain or EBU R128 to HiRes files

[Jorge22]

Hello,

I have just purchased my first albums in HiRes.

I have noticed that in both my HiFi system (NAD C368 with BlueOs module connected to a NAS) and in the car sound system (VW Discover Pro compatible with HiRes FLAC through SD cards or HDD connected to any of the USB plugs available), this new albums sound considerable louder than the FLAC files ripped from my CD collection. My questions are:
- Is there a way to apply loudness normalization to the HiRes FLAC files?
- I am in the process of ripping my entire CD collection and I am not sure which DSP I should choose between Replay Gain (track) or EBU R128. What are the benefits of each and the ideal choice considering my HIFi and car systems?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Have a great day.

[garym]

Re: Adding Replay Gain or EBU R128 to HiRes files

I'd use the DSP ReplayGain (note, *not* the ReplayGain(apply) which will permanently change your audio). The ReplayGain will only add tags that your players can use. Within the ReplayGain DSP settings, I choose EBU R128 (it is essentially the modern replacement of the ReplayGain algorithm), and have it add both Album and Track tags. There are cases when I might want my player to use one or the other. Under the DSP advanced options, I do *not* tick the "disable clip prevention box" and I leave the LUFS at -18.

You can set the ReplayGain DSP in the CD ripper. For your hi-res files, you can add RG tags by "converting to" the ReplayGain utility codec, with same settings as above.

[Jorge22]

Re: Adding Replay Gain or EBU R128 to HiRes files

Thank you very much Garym. I will follow your advice.

My only concern is that if, within the Replay Gain, I choose EBU R128 and any of my players does not support it I might loose the benefits of the RG algorithm. I will try both options with a CD that I know has significant volume variations and compare them in the two systems I use for music reproduction.

As said, many thanks for your help in both of my questions.

Have a great day.

[garym]

Re: Adding Replay Gain or EBU R128 to HiRes files

Thank you very much Garym. I will follow your advice.

My only concern is that if, within the Replay Gain, I choose EBU R128 and any of my players does not support it I might loose the benefits of the RG algorithm. I will try both options with a CD that I know has significant volume variations and compare them in the two systems I use for music reproduction.

As said, many thanks for your help in both of my questions.

Have a great day.

The ebu r128 is still written to a replaygain tag. So if a player can read replaygain tags, it can work whether the underlying algorithm that created the tag value is EBU R128 or old RG method. That said, there are players that don&*8217;t use RG tags. Cars are particularly bad at this.

[Jorge22]

Re: Adding Replay Gain or EBU R128 to HiRes files

Great information. So using EBU R128 should be always a plus.
Many thanks again for your help.

Have a great listen.