What is Replay Gain in Foobar?

ReplayGain is the name of a technique invented to achieve the same perceived playback loudness of audio files. It also allows the loudness of a specific sub-collection (an “album”) to be consistent with the rest of the collection, while allowing the dynamics from song to song on the album to remain intact.

Should I use replay gain?

There is no harm in always adding replay gain, though it will take a bit longer to rip the file because it has to analyze it to compute the replay gain level. But once that flag is set in the file, if you don’t like the effect you can always tell the playback device to ignore it.

What is Replay Gain in poweramp?

Replay Gain – Gives the option to turn gain off/on/on but prevent clipping “according to peak”. Gain Source – “Album” or “Track” Preamp – default is 5.9db. Preamp for songs without RG info – default is 3.8db.

How do I normalize volume in foobar?

In foobar you can replaygain all your music together, which is similar, though superior, to normalizing it. Just right-click on a selection and choose which type of replaygain you want. This is stored in tags though, rather than changing the files. To do this you need a program like mp3gain, depending on the file type.

How loud is Spotify master?

You should leave at least 1 dB of headroom. Though Spotify recommends mastering louder tracks to −2 dB true peak.

How does replay gain work?

ReplayGain works by first performing a psychoacoustic analysis of an entire audio track or album to measure peak level and perceived loudness. The difference between the measured perceived loudness and the desired target loudness is calculated; this is considered the ideal replay gain value.

What volume level should you mix at?

I recommend mixing at -23 dB LUFS, or having your peaks be between -18dB and -3dB. This will allow the mastering engineer the opportunity to process your song, without having to resort to turning it down.

How does replay gain work on Foobar 2000?

What confuses me in the Foobar manual is that it smooths out the audio level “… without physically changing the file itself”. The default method of ReplayGain changes the file in the sense of adding tag fields defining the alterations required to bring the file to a defined average perceived loudness.

Can a foobar2000 play at an altered volume?

If using a non-replaygain aware player, the files altered with MP3Gain (or the equivalent foobar2000 popup menu) will play at the altered volume, which files tagged with replaygain will play at their original volume.

What does ReplayGain do to an audio file?

ReplayGain just adds tags to the files and the player infers from that what volume adjustment it needs to do. Using mp3gain changes the actual audio date, and the reference level you use is way above what it normally is, so obviously you’re not going to have the same volume.

Can a replay gain be applied to a FLAC file?

If you run a ReplayGain scan of the FLAC files, the gain info will be written as metadata/tags to the file. So, yes, only software/hardware that supports ReplayGain can apply the gain adjustments.