GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 335073
replaygain on mixed collections =bad
Last modified: 2018-05-24 11:30:22 UTC
If some of my music is replaygained and some isn't (possibly some is in a format that doesn't contain RG info/gstreamer doesn't read it), and I have a selection of this music in a playlist then replaygain support causes more problems than it solves by making some tracks sound quite and some really loud! This is also a problem when shuffling through a music collection. There are a few possible fixes... 1. Only use replaygain when not shuffling (doesn't cover a few cases). 2. Have an option to disable replaygain - even just a gconf toggle would help! 3. Allow the replaygain target volume ot be adjusted. 4. Adjust the volume of non-replaygained files by some tunable amount (foobar2000, rather usefully, does this). 5. Include a replaygain scanner that stores RG data in the db and in tags where applicable (could be an option to automatically scan files without info). Other information: If Rhythmbox could scan files and store data in the db this would, of course, solve the problem completely and format-independently. Support could then be added gradually for reading/writing replaygain tags (there aren't any formal standards for this bit).
I'd vote for 5. I myself use an ugly little script to add replaygain support to my files when I rip new cd's, but RB doing this automatically in a sane way would be a definite plus. Provided it wouldn't under any circumstance screw up my files, of course. :)
Regarding option 4, the (outdated?) documentation on replaygain.org suggests using an average across some previous replaygain levels, saying "This represents the typical loudness of tracks in the users music collection, and is a much better estimate of the likely Replay Gain than 0dB, or no adjustment at all.". Currently it appears we just use the last replaygain level, which probably contributes to the irritation some people seem to feel towards it.
I wrote a patch for #3 over here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145103
#2, sorry.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/rhythmbox/issues/170.