Option to Analyze Volume by album

[roylayer]

The Analyze Volume feature is very nice when I am listening to a bunch of unrelated songs; however, it is not ideal for listening to a set of related songs (i.e. those in an album) where I WANT relatively quiet tracks (compared to other tracks on the album) to stay quiet.

MM's Help has a link to the Replay Gain Standard that it uses for volume leveling. That standard allows for two different Gains to be stored, one by song, and one by album:

http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/radio.html

Here is an excerpt from another page on that website: "Two Replay Gain adjustments should be stored. The "Radio" gain makes all tracks sound equally loud (like on the radio! Most users will prefer this). The "Audiophile" gain leaves intentional inter-track loudness differences intact. The "Radio" value is calculated by ReplayGain on a track-by-track basis (see and hear typical results). The "Audiophile" value is calculated by ReplayGain on a disc-by-disc bases. This latter value is user correctable/adjustable."

MediaMonkey follows the "Radio" Replay Gain standard approach to volume leveling. Since I mainly listen to songs by album, I request that "Audiophile" Replay Gain be implemented in MM. Thanks!

[roylayer]

Also, the help file says that the volume coeffient is NOT stored in the ID3 tag. Is this true? Is there any reason not to do this? Apparently it is an accepted "standard" in a number of MP3 players (according to the website quoted above).

[jiri]

"Audiophile" Replay Gain is definitely something we would like to implement, it isn't anything hard from the algorithmic perspective, but there's a number of problems in how to implement this so that it's easy to understand and not confusing option that would only clutter the UI. Anyway, it will come someday...

Jiri

[roylayer]

Thanks!

I do appreciate the attention that you give to making the UI easy to use and understand. It is one of the slickest applications that I've discovered in a long time! It is always difficult to balance flexibility, power, and ease of use, but MM does a very good job at it.

[Carlton Bale]

"Audiophile" Replay Gain is definitely something we would like to implement, it isn't anything hard from the algorithmic perspective, but there's a number of problems in how to implement this so that it's easy to understand and not confusing option that would only clutter the UI. Anyway, it will come someday...

Jiri

Jiri,

Any updated on Album / Audiophile ReplayGain support? I could get rid of foobar2000 completely if MM had this feature. Thanks!

-Carlton

[jiri]

Actually I was recently thinking about this. What I don't like about the original track/album gain proposal that's currently implemented in several application is that there are two leveling fields, which makes it all unnecessarily complicated.

My idea was to (optionally) analyze whole albums when you start volume leveling calculation in MM and store the value to the standard Track Replay Gain field. This way there wouldn't be any need for switching title/album mode and tracks would be always played at proper volume.

Any thoughts?

Jiri

[pah68]

Sounds good.
What about my albums I've already levelled individually?

[rovingcowboy]

from what i can make out of this thread is that your trying to make the songs on albums that are of lower volume as in

?? . soft love songs ??

to be in a louder volume but not raise the volume of the albums

that are well like.

Acid Rock albums.

both need to be leveled only you don't want to mess up the lower songs.
with the same level of boost that the louder songs need.

i thought that was taken care of when you normalized the songs.

and when you opened them in the wav editor before you converted them to the format you want to keep them in?

is that what your talking about if not then i am in need of more explaining.

as i always turn the sound up in the wav editor and normalize it then use monkey to convert it and level it again. my songs are the same volume as on the albums.

if that is not what you want then i am not really sure what your asking since monkey already levels the songs.?

unless you are wanting to different volume controls in monkey one for low songs and one for loud songs.

if that is the case then a script is the easy way to do that..
just make all the low volume wanted songs. have a custom tag that is something like low sound?

then run a script to turn the volume down on the mixer when it sees that custome field and then make it turn it up when that field is not found in the songs properties?

sound easy to me? but then read my signature

[Carlton Bale]

My idea was to (optionally) analyze whole albums when you start volume leveling calculation in MM and store the value to the standard Track Replay Gain field. This way there wouldn't be any need for switching title/album mode and tracks would be always played at proper volume.

Any thoughts?

Jiri

I agree that having two ReplayGain tags is overly confusing for playback because you just don't know when to switch between them.

I'm not sure the best way to implement this without making it too confusing. To be as compatible as possible, I think calculating and writting both of the actual tags (album & track) is the best bet. MM could then set a global option for which tag to use (audiophile = album, standard/radio = track) or just use album gain if it is there and track gain if it is not.

I think an option to write the album gain info to both the album and track fields is a good idea as a bonus feature. That would be a great work-around for devices that do not support album gain and look only at track gain. However, to do this by default, might cause issues outside of MM. However, now that I think about it, this is probably an option I would enable myself for the very reason of compatibility.

-Carlton

[Carlton Bale]

i thought that was taken care of when you normalized the songs.

and when you opened them in the wav editor before you converted them to the format you want to keep them in?

is that what your talking about if not then i am in need of more explaining.

Well, not exactly. It has nothing to do with genre or music type. Did you check-out the ReplayGain page at hydrogenaudio? It's a good starting point.

Basically, think of an album with a really quite track followed by a dramatically loud one. The artist is going after a large difference in volume between the two for effect. The current normalization will set the levels independent of one another, so the quite song will not be as quiet and the loud song will not be as loud. Album gain will adjust the entire album as a whole to preserve the original volume difference that the artist intended. So, if the entire album as a whole is way too quiet, album gain will fix that without killing the dramatic difference between tracks within that album.

[Lowlander]

I think that both track and album levelling should be calculated. The user can then set which option is preferred.

• Some people still work with albums and listen to complete albums - album levelling makes most sense here.
• Some people work with tracks - either album or track levelling makes sense.
• Some times you use MM at a party - track levelling makes more sense to prevent very loud music or very soft music.
• Some people use small/ poor quality speakers - track levelling makes more sense to get the most out of the speakers.
• Many people download songs - track levelling might make more sense as downloaded songs might not have correct volume ratio to each other. Especially if songs come from different sources.

There are probably some other scenarios where one or the other makes more sense. I'd probably stick with track levelling if it remains available.

I'm not sure if people would require an instant swictch (button/option in player itself) but my guess is that a option in the options menu is sufficient.

[graham]

and in addition to all these requirements:-
- Please will MM allow Volume Levelling for other formats (esp. WMA) in addition to MP3.

[rovingcowboy]

graham when you rip or scan a song in to your computer.

do so to the wav format.

you then do your editing in the wav format such as adding echo or boosting the volume to what you want it in there.

then open monkey and scan that folder you have the wav files in.

no go select the wav files in the recently added list.

go to tools then to analyize volume it should analyize them for you.
now you convert them to to wma or ogg or what ever you want and check the level volume box if you want to. it should level the wav's volume to what you analyized it at. then convert it to your format.

when you look at the converted wma file it would not have anything in the field. but select it again and reanalyize it the numbers -0.0 should be added to the field showning you that it was already leveled.

atleast that is how it works on my computer.

[tom.s]

(assuming album gain is the same as audiophile setting)

My current method of getting songs into mediamonkey involves ripping the albums, then running them through MP3gain on its "album gain" setting, then importing them into mediamonkey.

It would be very cool if mediamonkey supported album gain, as then I could just do the whole thing in mediamonkey.

The way mp3gain works is you set a standard volume level (say 87db) and then if you analyse albums it analyses all the volumes of songs in the album, works out the average, and then shifts the whole album by a standard amount so that the album's average is 87db.

Therefore the quieter songs on the album would be less than 87db, and the louder songs might be louder. But they would all be around the same level.

I'd have thought the solution would be for all albums ripped or imported to have the option of "album gain" applied. Then you could still have the existing "track gain" as a runtime option in the player for those who wanted it to be like a radio.

[onkel_enno]

Maybe that could help:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5385