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I like mp3gain because it can alter the gain of a track without re-encoding (so no potential quality loss) and is fully reversible as it notes all changes it makes in tag information. While replaygain alone is nice in theory, the fact that there isn't very much software, and virtually no hardware support makes it far from a portable solution. mp3gain allows you to apply the gain changes so that they are in effect on all players, but still reverse the changes if necessary. Also, since I use an iPod and iTunes it's possible to use mp3gain to set the default gain on all tracks to the replaygain album level, then use iTune's soundcheck to set individual track track gains, then switch between them by enabling or disabling soundcheck. This can be very useful while switching from a playlist to random tracks, for instance. There are some methods (though I haven't tried them yet) to copy replaygain values to the soundcheck tags for use in iTunes.
The downside of mp3gain is it is SLOW. Not only does it not support multicore processing (which would speed things up about 4x on my system) for some reason the replaygain scan is an order of magnitude slower than other software I've tried, such as dbPoweramp's replaygain filter. It doesn't look like there's going to be any further development of mp3gain as the last beta version is still in beta and several years old.
So what I'd like to see is dbPoweramp's replaygain filter enhanced to support the features of mp3gain. Namely: applying track or album gain to the mp3 data in a reversible way with changes noted in appropriate tags. (It wouldn't even be a bad idea to use the same tags as mp3gain for compatibility.)
Beyond that, it would be nice to be able to select the target dB value as you can in mp3gain. Personally, I'm okay with the default 89 dB but I know some people would like this feature so it seems like it shouldn't be too hard to implement if you do decide to upgrade the filter.
Finally, I'd like to see an option to copy either the track or album gain into the soundcheck tag for each track so that it can be used in iTunes/iPod. I realize this is a niche request, but given how popular iTunes and iPod I think it could be very beneficial for many users.
Thanks.
The downside of mp3gain is it is SLOW. Not only does it not support multicore processing (which would speed things up about 4x on my system) for some reason the replaygain scan is an order of magnitude slower than other software I've tried, such as dbPoweramp's replaygain filter. It doesn't look like there's going to be any further development of mp3gain as the last beta version is still in beta and several years old.
So what I'd like to see is dbPoweramp's replaygain filter enhanced to support the features of mp3gain. Namely: applying track or album gain to the mp3 data in a reversible way with changes noted in appropriate tags. (It wouldn't even be a bad idea to use the same tags as mp3gain for compatibility.)
Beyond that, it would be nice to be able to select the target dB value as you can in mp3gain. Personally, I'm okay with the default 89 dB but I know some people would like this feature so it seems like it shouldn't be too hard to implement if you do decide to upgrade the filter.
Finally, I'd like to see an option to copy either the track or album gain into the soundcheck tag for each track so that it can be used in iTunes/iPod. I realize this is a niche request, but given how popular iTunes and iPod I think it could be very beneficial for many users.
Thanks.