Newbie has some questions

[Haskell]

Hello everybody!

This is my first time using the software so I'm sorry if these are stupid questions.

I used to listen to music on my phone witch has replaygain support and now I bought a new dap witch unfortunatley does not support replaygain. I want to fix this by applying the gain directly to the file.
My library is all 16/44.1 flac I used the following DSP: bit depth:24 -> ReplayGain apply -> bit depth:16,dither:tpdf.

Is this the correct way without losing too much sound quality?

I also transcoded flac to flac a file without any dsp and i saw i modified the file size from 21.9 tot 18.6 and bitrate from 814 to 690 why did it do that?Did I lose some audio quality or what happened?

Thanks! And have a wonderful day!

[garym]

Re: Newbie has some questions

Hello everybody!

This is my first time using the software so I'm sorry if these are stupid questions.

I used to listen to music on my phone witch has replaygain support and now I bought a new dap witch unfortunatley does not support replaygain. I want to fix this by applying the gain directly to the file.
My library is all 16/44.1 flac I used the following DSP: bit depth:24 -> ReplayGain apply -> bit depth:16,dither:tpdf.

Is this the correct way without losing too much sound quality?

I also transcoded flac to flac a file without any dsp and i saw i modified the file size from 21.9 tot 18.6 and bitrate from 814 to 690 why did it do that?Did I lose some audio quality or what happened?

Thanks! And have a wonderful day!

If your files are all 16/44.1, why are you modifying the bitdepth from 24 to 16 and applying dither? Just make a copy of all your files (so you keep the original ones unchanged). Then do a batch conversion of them "converting to" the DSP ReplayGain(apply). then you'll have a version of your library with the RG values applied to the audio stream (and this will work in your new Dap).

Regarding file size and bitrate. There are newer versions of FLaC that may be more efficient on size of file. And do you know what size compression factor you used in creating the FLAC files (default in dbpa is "5", but the original rips could have been less than 5, which would mean the filesize is larger. Also, is there embedded artwork in the files? Any difference in artwork or even number and detail of tags could change the file size.

And the bitrate that gets reported is just an average. As FLAC is VBR and there are lots of different bitrates. Bottom line, FLAC is lossles. you can take the old FLAC, convert to WAV, then the new FLAC (with no dsp) and convert it to WAV. Then you can compare the two wav files and they will be bit perfect duplicates. Or you can just compare the audio CRC of the two flac files. Either way, you'll have proof for yourself that the two files have identical audio stream. (in summary, flac to flac conversion does NOT change the audio stream....they are bit perfect copies of each other.....that's why FLAC is called a "lossless" format.)

[Haskell]

Re: Newbie has some questions

Thanks for the info.

Regarding bitdepth, I read somewhere I need to up the bitdepth before doing any dsp as to not lose audio quality and the returning it to the original bitdepth, is that not accurate? That is why i went 16->24->16 again.

[garym]

Re: Newbie has some questions

Thanks for the info.

Regarding bitdepth, I read somewhere I need to up the bitdepth before doing any dsp as to not lose audio quality and the returning it to the original bitdepth, is that not accurate? That is why i went 16->24->16 again.

accurate in some contexts, but not in the context of simply apply RG to your files.

[Haskell]

Re: Newbie has some questions

Thank you very much!