Adding ReplayGain to tracks

[Andreilg]

Hello, I am wondering if this is a correct process for achieving an "ideal" in terms of track volumes with the main purpose being at home listening and DJ'ing:

1) Obtain entire album in question and place it into a "No Replaygain" folder.
2) Copy said tracks into my main Music folder.
3) Use the RPG Utility Codec to add Album Gain RPG at -18 LUK with clipping prevention disabled and apply the replaygain from the tags using the RPG DSP with the same settings.
4) Delete whatever tracks I don't want in the new folders, but the remaining tracks will still have benefited from the other tracks' relative volumes for the replaygain.

I'm essentially trying to do what PerfectTunes does. Anything wrong in this process?

Thank you for your time.

[garym]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

To clarify, you want to permanently modify the volume of these tracks, not
just add replaygain tags?

[Andreilg]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

Yes. The idea being that most players do not support replaygain, particularly the ones I use being Plex and Bitwig Studio. Thus I would like to have an archive copy of the entire album and then a replaygain volume modified version that I actually use.

[garym]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

Yes. The idea being that most players do not support replaygain, particularly the ones I use being Plex and Bitwig Studio. Thus I would like to have an archive copy of the entire album and then a replaygain volume modified version that I actually use.

Yes then, your plan will work. I probably wouldn't disable clip protection. But that's a minor point and rarely relevant.

[garym]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

Yes then, your plan will work. I probably wouldn't disable clip protection. But that's a minor point and rarely relevant.

But I think you can do both the create RG tag and apply it in one step with the replayGain (apply) DSP. Or perhaps it's the volume normalize DSP. Take a look at their descriptions.

But question. Why don't you add both track and album RG tags when you rip to your archive version. Then you can just do the apply part because all the files will already have RG tags.

[Andreilg]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

But I think you can do both the create RG tag and apply it in one step with the replayGain (apply) DSP. Or perhaps it's the volume normalize DSP. Take a look at their descriptions.

But question. Why don't you add both track and album RG tags when you rip to your archive version. Then you can just do the apply part because all the files will already have RG tags.

Yea I'm going to do them in one step. It's the RG (APPLY) DSP I believe. Normalization isn't what I'm going for.

As for ripping, I'm not ripping. I buy almost all of my files off of Bleep.com in digital format.

Also why do you suggest I disable clip prevention? It is my understanding that most of the time the clipping that it prevents will be inaudible +0.2dB type of peaks and regardless most playback systems, especially in my case when I DJ for example with a limiter, have protection already and thus using clip prevention just makes certain tracks not change accordingly.

And why do you suggest I do track RG as well? Isn't album gain superior since it takes into account album mastering and allows quiet tracks to be relatively quiet?

[garym]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

In your use case you don't need track RG. My players are RG tag aware and automatically use album tag value when I'm playing a complete album but track RG values when doing a random mixture of tracks from different albums. Sort of best of both worlds.

And I see your point re clip protection, as you have the special case of DJ equipment.

[Andreilg]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

That makes sense, but wouldn't you still want album gain even when shuffling because the albums will still be technically equivalent average loudness and you'll still maintain that dynamic range difference?

Also turns out I can't assign a directory when adding replaygain so I need to do this in two steps. Just to clarify though, replaygain is something I only need to assign once right? I used to redo it every time I added more music but now that I understand it better it doesn't matter if I add new music because it's comparing the albums to a specified loudness, not to each other right?

[garym]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

That makes sense, but wouldn't you still want album gain even when shuffling because the albums will still be technically equivalent average loudness and you'll still maintain that dynamic range difference?

Also turns out I can't assign a directory when adding replaygain so I need to do this in two steps. Just to clarify though, replaygain is something I only need to assign once right? I used to redo it every time I added more music but now that I understand it better it doesn't matter if I add new music because it's comparing the albums to a specified loudness, not to each other right?

when playing random I'm not a purist. I just want everything about the same volume. Like a radio station does. Track RG used to be called radio mode.

And yes, you only need your process once. You are NOT comparing all tracks to each other v

[Andreilg]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

Ah I see, in that case I completely understand.

Thanks a lot for your help, I really appreciate it. I've got one more question if you don't mind, for the LUFS would you recommend -18 or -16? I've read up on it and it seems foobar2000 does -18 but the iTunes standard is -16. I'm not really sure which to choose or why. Do you have any insight on this?

[garym]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

I use -18

[Andreilg]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

I'll just go with that then, thanks

[Andreilg]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

So not sure what I'm doing wrong but comparing the waveforms of the archives with the processed files, they are identical.

https://i.imgur.com/wW1e9IR.png

https://i.imgur.com/BofnkEw.png

https://i.imgur.com/BtdXM3g.png

these are the settings I'm using. Anything I'm doing wrong here?

[schmidj]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

Not sure what you used, but from what I read here in the past, if you want to use Replay Gain (apply) you need to run Replay Gain first, as apply looks for existing tags and applies them to change the gain of the track/album as required.

I believe Volume Normalize does both in one pass.

The difference between -18 and -16 is 2dB, essentially imperceptible with most music. Regarding audibility of clipping, maybe no, maybe yes. Depends on the material. A recording with wide dynamic range and little or no dynamics processing, like classical or some jazz will probably clip badly and very audibly during the crescendos, as the quiet parts get included in determining the loudness. Much pop music, if it clips at all, is going to be things like cymbal crashes and momentary short peaks, clips not audible.

Once its clipped its clipped, unless you use "unclipper" software, which reforms the clipped waveforms. Your DJ setup may include a limiter, but if it is already clipped, the damage is done, and the clipped audio is what will be reproduced.

[Andreilg]

Re: Adding ReplayGain to tracks

Not sure what you used, but from what I read here in the past, if you want to use Replay Gain (apply) you need to run Replay Gain first, as apply looks for existing tags and applies them to change the gain of the track/album as required.

I believe Volume Normalize does both in one pass.

The difference between -18 and -16 is 2dB, essentially imperceptible with most music. Regarding audibility of clipping, maybe no, maybe yes. Depends on the material. A recording with wide dynamic range and little or no dynamics processing, like classical or some jazz will probably clip badly and very audibly during the crescendos, as the quiet parts get included in determining the loudness. Much pop music, if it clips at all, is going to be things like cymbal crashes and momentary short peaks, clips not audible.

Once its clipped its clipped, unless you use "unclipper" software, which reforms the clipped waveforms. Your DJ setup may include a limiter, but if it is already clipped, the damage is done, and the clipped audio is what will be reproduced.

I tried doing them seperately but it didn't work. I realized I'm forced to do an actual conversion to have replaygain (apply) do something, which is fine I just made them all AIFFs anyway..which I guess is misleading transcoding but I'm not giving them out to anybody so that's fine and I have the originals archived.

Volume normalize only does track replaygain.

As for clipping, I see your point but all of my tracks are like RG -12dB and such and I have jazz. Never honestly even seen a +dB but maybe I'm just not there yet in my library. Do you suggest having clip prevention on then? The reason I'm reluctant is maybe it'll save an album or two (which I can just put clip prevention on if its audible) but I feel like for a lot of tracks it's going to just not change them at all and have the tracks be wildly different from the rest of my collection, which may be just as bad. What do you think about this?