[Flac] Replay-gain

[Brian Willoughby]

Chris,

You should be careful what you ask for.  Unless there is silence  
between every track, multiple replay gain values during playback will  
cause an abrupt volume change at the track marker, depending upon how  
the player implements replay gain.  You may have a collection of CDs  
where there is always silence between tracks, but many CDs have a few  
songs that bleed together, perhaps even the entire album is one  
continuous piece.  Computing separate replay gain values on a group  
of tracks that are together in one file can backfire on you in  
certain cases.

Another thing to consider is that nearly 100% of albums are mastered  
so that all the songs have compatible volume levels.  This is another  
reason to treat the entire CD with one replay gain.  The mastering  
engineer may make the entire CD louder or softer than average, but  
the individual songs should already be matched.  Of course, there are  
exceptions.  A greatest hits CD or especially an unauthorized  
collection of songs probably won't be mastered correctly due to  
laziness or lack of budget.

i.e. There is not one "correct use" for all CDs.

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting


On Feb 11, 2008, at 06:40, Christopher Brown wrote:
> On Feb 11, 2008 1:03 AM, Christopher Brown <c-b at asu.edu> wrote:
>> Is there a way to correctly use the replay-gain feature on flac files
>> that contain an entire album (i.e., multiple tracks with  
>> seekpoints added
>> from a
>> cue sheet)?

As I understand it, flac generates replay-gain values for each flac  
file that
you pass (it assumes they are each a track and that they comprise an  
album),
along with album values. If you pass a flac file that contains an entire
album (multiple tracks), it treats it as an album with only a single  
track.

In other words, flac's replay-gain feature doesn't seem to know about  
cue
sheets and/or multiple tracks in a single flac file. I would like to use
replay-gain to equate each track, which is what I meant by 'correctly  
use'.

Of course, I may be completely mistaken on several fronts.

-- 
Chris