Is there a better way of doing this?

[andrewuk]

Hi all

I have started the long and boring task of re-ripping all my music to lossless.

I am using a couple of the DSPs in dMC reference (12.3) namely to trim silence and normalise each track (replay gain). I am using the Normalise DSP in replaygain mode as I want the actual volume to be modified in the file rather than just writing tags (mainly because WMP and my car and portable MP3 players will not do anything with replaygain tags).

This works great for most CDs but for "Live" recordings or continuous CDs I'd really like to have the replaygain applied as album gain rather than individual track gain because you get an audiable change in volume between tracks otherwise. It seems that you can't apply album gain when using normalise in replaygain mode - only per track is allowed. For live CDs I am obviously not using the trim silence DSP, either.

Currently I am dealing with these CDs by ripping them as one massive WAV file using EAC with a cuesheet - using dMC to normalise the entire wavefile using replaygain and then splitting it up again using the EAC and the CUE sheet and finally converting to lossless with dMC again. This works but is rather long winded but can't see any other way of doing it as one process?

The only other way I have tried is to use the normalise DSP and set a fixed gain value of say -6db to each track and then adjust it by -1db each time until the CD sounds the same volume as the rest. Not an exact science and it takes a few goes to get it about right!

Apart from this I think the software is brilliant and is making the whole process far more bearable that I thought it would be.

[jtbse]

Re: Is there a better way of doing this?

The only other option I can think of would still involve some other tools and multiple steps.

You could rip the CD to .wav and use WavGain to apply the album gain adjustments. (I think the newest version is even "undoable").

Then use dBPowerAmp to convert to your wav's to your format of choice. The other problem with this is what to do about tags...but I'm sure you've already figured that out with your current method.

[Edit:..dunno...but maybe WavGain could be applied as part of the original rip using the "Run External" DSP? Is there a way to set this up to run once automatically at the end of the rip, providing all of the .wav's created?? If so, then it would just be a matter of running the CD Input followed by a dMC run to do the final conversion??]