[gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Andrew Lowe]

Hi all,
	Is there a way to change the "volume" of a mp3/vorbis track? By volume, 
I'm referring to lining up several tracks on your 
computer/phone/tablet/thingy, setting the one volume level and then 
letting them play. For example, the first track will be quiet, of all 
ironies my Led Zeppelin tracks are all like this, the next track will be 
loud, the next track "in the middle", in other words it's Goldilocks and 
the three bears with audio tracks.

	Is there a way I can either during the ripping process, or subsequently 
in a post-processing, make the "average" volume of all my tracks the same?

	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,

		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Willie Matthews]

On 05/19/12 04:54, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,
>     Is there a way to change the "volume" of a mp3/vorbis track? By
> volume, I'm referring to lining up several tracks on your
> computer/phone/tablet/thingy, setting the one volume level and then
> letting them play. For example, the first track will be quiet, of all
> ironies my Led Zeppelin tracks are all like this, the next track will
> be loud, the next track "in the middle", in other words it's
> Goldilocks and the three bears with audio tracks.
>
>     Is there a way I can either during the ripping process, or
> subsequently in a post-processing, make the "average" volume of all my
> tracks the same?
>
>     Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
>
>         Andrew
>
>
>
>
There is a program out there called "normalize". Best practice is to do
it while you are ripping the CD.

-- 

Willie Matthews
matthews.willie@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Pandu Poluan]

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On May 19, 2012 7:00 PM, "Andrew Lowe" <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>        Is there a way to change the "volume" of a mp3/vorbis track? By
volume, I'm referring to lining up several tracks on your
computer/phone/tablet/thingy, setting the one volume level and then letting
them play. For example, the first track will be quiet, of all ironies my
Led Zeppelin tracks are all like this, the next track will be loud, the
next track "in the middle", in other words it's Goldilocks and the three
bears with audio tracks.
>
>        Is there a way I can either during the ripping process, or
subsequently in a post-processing, make the "average" volume of all my
tracks the same?
>
>        Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
>

What you're looking for is called "replay gain" (alternative spelling,
"replaygain"). Basically, it's a two-step process : (1) analyze the
'effective loudness' of a track, and (2) add a tag indicating the
difference between the measured 'effective loudness' with a reference level
of 89 dB SPL

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ReplayGain

The above wiki article might be out of date with regards to the available
software. Try asking around in the HydrogenAudio forums. They are a bunch
of friendly guys ;-)

(PS: my handle there is "pepoluan", although honestly I haven't dabbled in
any forum discussions for several years.)

Rgds,

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Willie Matthews]

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Nice! I will have to go and try that one soon.

On 05/19/12 05:22, Pandu Poluan wrote:
>
>
> On May 19, 2012 7:00 PM, "Andrew Lowe" <agl@wht.com.au
> <mailto:agl@wht.com.au>> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >        Is there a way to change the "volume" of a mp3/vorbis track?
> By volume, I'm referring to lining up several tracks on your
> computer/phone/tablet/thingy, setting the one volume level and then
> letting them play. For example, the first track will be quiet, of all
> ironies my Led Zeppelin tracks are all like this, the next track will
> be loud, the next track "in the middle", in other words it's
> Goldilocks and the three bears with audio tracks.
> >
> >        Is there a way I can either during the ripping process, or
> subsequently in a post-processing, make the "average" volume of all my
> tracks the same?
> >
> >        Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
> >
>
> What you're looking for is called "replay gain" (alternative spelling,
> "replaygain"). Basically, it's a two-step process : (1) analyze the
> 'effective loudness' of a track, and (2) add a tag indicating the
> difference between the measured 'effective loudness' with a reference
> level of 89 dB SPL
>
> http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ReplayGain
>
> The above wiki article might be out of date with regards to the
> available software. Try asking around in the HydrogenAudio forums.
> They are a bunch of friendly guys ;-)
>
> (PS: my handle there is "pepoluan", although honestly I haven't
> dabbled in any forum discussions for several years.)
>
> Rgds,
>

-- 

Willie Matthews
matthews.willie@gmail.com


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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Andrew Lowe]

On 05/19/12 20:22, Pandu Poluan wrote:
>
> On May 19, 2012 7:00 PM, "Andrew Lowe" <agl@wht.com.au
> <mailto:agl@wht.com.au>> wrote:
>  >
>  > Hi all,
[snip]
...
...
...
[snip]
>
> What you're looking for is called "replay gain" (alternative spelling,
> "replaygain"). Basically, it's a two-step process : (1) analyze the
> 'effective loudness' of a track, and (2) add a tag indicating the
> difference between the measured 'effective loudness' with a reference
> level of 89 dB SPL
>
> http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ReplayGain
>
> The above wiki article might be out of date with regards to the
> available software. Try asking around in the HydrogenAudio forums. They
> are a bunch of friendly guys ;-)
>
> (PS: my handle there is "pepoluan", although honestly I haven't dabbled
> in any forum discussions for several years.)
>
> Rgds,
>

Pandu,

	Thanks for the reply, I'll look into it tomorrow.

	Regards,
		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[ny6p01]

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On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 07:54:10PM +0800, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,
> 	Is there a way to change the "volume" of a mp3/vorbis track? By volume, 
> I'm referring to lining up several tracks on your 
> computer/phone/tablet/thingy, setting the one volume level and then 
> letting them play. For example, the first track will be quiet, of all 
> ironies my Led Zeppelin tracks are all like this, the next track will be 
> loud, the next track "in the middle", in other words it's Goldilocks and 
> the three bears with audio tracks.
> 
> 	Is there a way I can either during the ripping process, or subsequently 
> in a post-processing, make the "average" volume of all my tracks the same?
> 
> 	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
> 
> 		Andrew

don't rip myself, but back in the day, the big ripping programs would usu
have some kind of 'leveling' plugin that would equalize the volumes on all
the tracks. 

Terry

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Jesús J. Guerrero Botella]

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Just for sake of correctness, what the op wants is called normalization, in
the world of sound edition.

It can be done once, as you rip the file or it can be done on the fly when
playing it. "replaygain" is (as the name itself says) an implementation of
this that automatically adjusts the gain of each soundtrack. But its just
the name of the concrete implementation, not the name of the process. Just
like volvo is a brand of cars, but not all cars are branded volvo.

I,ll add that if you normalize while ripping you are damaging permanently
the audio files, which in addition to a loussy format like mp3, and cheap
speakers, can result in a very bad thing, but that really depends on how
demanding your ear is...

Specially for bands like led zeppelin, I would just use the second method
(adjust while playing, rather than while ripping). Someday you will want to
hear the whole disk as it was intended, and if you normalized on ripping
you won't be able to.
---
Jesús Guerrero Botella
El 19/05/2012 16:22, <ny6p01@gmail.com> escribió:

> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 07:54:10PM +0800, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >       Is there a way to change the "volume" of a mp3/vorbis track? By
> volume,
> > I'm referring to lining up several tracks on your
> > computer/phone/tablet/thingy, setting the one volume level and then
> > letting them play. For example, the first track will be quiet, of all
> > ironies my Led Zeppelin tracks are all like this, the next track will be
> > loud, the next track "in the middle", in other words it's Goldilocks and
> > the three bears with audio tracks.
> >
> >       Is there a way I can either during the ripping process, or
> subsequently
> > in a post-processing, make the "average" volume of all my tracks the
> same?
> >
> >       Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
> >
> >               Andrew
>
> don't rip myself, but back in the day, the big ripping programs would usu
> have some kind of 'leveling' plugin that would equalize the volumes on all
> the tracks.
>
> Terry
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Stroller]

On 20 May 2012, at 10:41, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
> ...
> Specially for bands like led zeppelin, I would just use the second method (adjust while playing, rather than while ripping). Someday you will want to hear the whole disk as it was intended, …

I agree that adjust-whilst-playing is the best method, but we won't be hearing this music as intended for a while.

All digital Led Zep releases (i.e. including all CDs) are notoriously poorly remastered, with excessive gain applied.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

So far they have deteriorated with each remastering / re-release. 

Huge threads on the Steve Hoffman forums discussing this, if you want to cork sniff.

Stroller.

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 20/05/12 12:41, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
> Just for sake of correctness, what the op wants is called normalization,
> in the world of sound edition.

Actually, no.  That's not what he wants.  Normalization simply adjusts 
to 0db.  How loud something sounds however is not a simple matter of 
what the maximum peak of a waveform is.  ReplayGain actually analyzes 
the music to tell how loud it *sounds*, not how loud it actually is.

For example, you can have audio that was normalized (0db) but doesn't 
sound as loud as, say, -5db audio, but which has compressed dynamic range.

Normalization makes audio equally loud for hardware.  ReplayGain makes 
audio equally loud for humans. :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[ny6p01]

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On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 06:01:27PM +0100, Stroller wrote:
> 
> On 20 May 2012, at 10:41, Jes?s J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
> > ...
> > Specially for bands like led zeppelin, I would just use the second method (adjust while playing, rather than while ripping). Someday you will want to hear the whole disk as it was intended, ?
> 
> I agree that adjust-whilst-playing is the best method, but we won't be hearing this music as intended for a while.
> 
> All digital Led Zep releases (i.e. including all CDs) are notoriously poorly remastered, with excessive gain applied.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
> 
> So far they have deteriorated with each remastering / re-release. 
> 
> Huge threads on the Steve Hoffman forums discussing this, if you want to cork sniff.
> 
> Stroller.

I can attest to this - Led Zep II - awful. An older disk, not even a
remaster.  I can only play it at moderate levels - it loses all it's dynamic
range at higher levels.  A big disappointment.


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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 8:44 PM,  <ny6p01@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 06:01:27PM +0100, Stroller wrote:
>>
>> On 20 May 2012, at 10:41, Jes?s J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>> > ...
>> > Specially for bands like led zeppelin, I would just use the second method (adjust while playing, rather than while ripping). Someday you will want to hear the whole disk as it was intended, ?
>>
>> I agree that adjust-whilst-playing is the best method, but we won't be hearing this music as intended for a while.
>>
>> All digital Led Zep releases (i.e. including all CDs) are notoriously poorly remastered, with excessive gain applied.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
>>
>> So far they have deteriorated with each remastering / re-release.
>>
>> Huge threads on the Steve Hoffman forums discussing this, if you want to cork sniff.
>>
>> Stroller.
>
> I can attest to this - Led Zep II - awful. An older disk, not even a
> remaster.  I can only play it at moderate levels - it loses all it's dynamic
> range at higher levels.  A big disappointment.

Dipping only slightly further offtopic, are they still pressing vinyl?
I believe there are a number of tools for automatically splitting and
transcoding audio input from a vinyl player.


-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Andrew Lowe]

On 21/05/2012 2:48 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 20/05/12 12:41, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>> Just for sake of correctness, what the op wants is called normalization,
>> in the world of sound edition.
>
> Actually, no. That's not what he wants. Normalization simply adjusts to
> 0db. How loud something sounds however is not a simple matter of what
> the maximum peak of a waveform is. ReplayGain actually analyzes the
> music to tell how loud it *sounds*, not how loud it actually is.
>
> For example, you can have audio that was normalized (0db) but doesn't
> sound as loud as, say, -5db audio, but which has compressed dynamic range.
>
> Normalization makes audio equally loud for hardware. ReplayGain makes
> audio equally loud for humans. :-)
>
>
>
	Aarrrggghhh, I'm getting confused. More background on my original 
question. I work in a liquor store and the manager insists on playing 
the usual crappy FM radio station, "MORE HITS WHEN YOU WANT THEM AND WE 
HAVE THE BEST VARIETY......blah blah blah". I'm going crazy so I've 
loaded up a memory stick with music from my media machine and using a 
small Android tablet, play the music through the sound system instead of 
the radio. As you can guess this is not audiophile central, a cheap, 
quite old "3 in 1" sound system, one speaker one end of the shop, 
another in the middle of the shop.

	I can't do the turn up/turn down thingy as I might set the level when I 
start, and it may happen to be a quiet song. I then head down the other 
end of the shop, the track finishes and is then followed by a loud 
track, which is most likely excessively loud for a shop. Or conversely I 
start with a loud track, set the level and then it's followed by a quiet 
track and the shop goes quiet.

	I have no intention of applying whatever process to the media machine, 
the tracks on that remain as ripped. I only want to "fiddle" the tracks 
on the memory stick. As this is on an Android tablet, quite a cheap one 
at that, I'm also not sure how whizz bang the media player is so if I 
can get away with the tracks being as "standard" as possible would be 
good - my reading earlier on in this thread leads me to believe 
ReplayGain may not, although I'll prepared to test, be supported.

	So with that background, normalise or ReplayGain?

	Thanks for the discussion and thoughts,

		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
> On 21/05/2012 2:48 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>
>> On 20/05/12 12:41, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>>>
>>> Just for sake of correctness, what the op wants is called normalization,
>>> in the world of sound edition.
>>
>>
>> Actually, no. That's not what he wants. Normalization simply adjusts to
>> 0db. How loud something sounds however is not a simple matter of what
>> the maximum peak of a waveform is. ReplayGain actually analyzes the
>> music to tell how loud it *sounds*, not how loud it actually is.
>>
>> For example, you can have audio that was normalized (0db) but doesn't
>> sound as loud as, say, -5db audio, but which has compressed dynamic range.
>>
>> Normalization makes audio equally loud for hardware. ReplayGain makes
>> audio equally loud for humans. :-)
>>
>>
>>
>        Aarrrggghhh, I'm getting confused. More background on my original
> question. I work in a liquor store and the manager insists on playing the
> usual crappy FM radio station, "MORE HITS WHEN YOU WANT THEM AND WE HAVE THE
> BEST VARIETY......blah blah blah". I'm going crazy so I've loaded up a
> memory stick with music from my media machine and using a small Android
> tablet, play the music through the sound system instead of the radio. As you
> can guess this is not audiophile central, a cheap, quite old "3 in 1" sound
> system, one speaker one end of the shop, another in the middle of the shop.
>
>        I can't do the turn up/turn down thingy as I might set the level when
> I start, and it may happen to be a quiet song. I then head down the other
> end of the shop, the track finishes and is then followed by a loud track,
> which is most likely excessively loud for a shop. Or conversely I start with
> a loud track, set the level and then it's followed by a quiet track and the
> shop goes quiet.
>
>        I have no intention of applying whatever process to the media
> machine, the tracks on that remain as ripped. I only want to "fiddle" the
> tracks on the memory stick. As this is on an Android tablet, quite a cheap
> one at that, I'm also not sure how whizz bang the media player is so if I
> can get away with the tracks being as "standard" as possible would be good -
> my reading earlier on in this thread leads me to believe ReplayGain may not,
> although I'll prepared to test, be supported.
>
>        So with that background, normalise or ReplayGain?

So long as the media player you're using supports it, I'm of the
opinion you should use ReplayGain over modifying the actual encoded
data. This way, you can take multiple passes without seriously risking
screwing stuff up.


-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Pandu Poluan]

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On May 21, 2012 9:18 PM, "Andrew Lowe" <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
>

[ze schnipp]

>        Aarrrggghhh, I'm getting confused. More background on my original
question. I work in a liquor store and the manager insists on playing the
usual crappy FM radio station, "MORE HITS WHEN YOU WANT THEM AND WE HAVE
THE BEST VARIETY......blah blah blah". I'm going crazy so I've loaded up a
memory stick with music from my media machine and using a small Android
tablet, play the music through the sound system instead of the radio. As
you can guess this is not audiophile central, a cheap, quite old "3 in 1"
sound system, one speaker one end of the shop, another in the middle of the
shop.
>
>        I can't do the turn up/turn down thingy as I might set the level
when I start, and it may happen to be a quiet song. I then head down the
other end of the shop, the track finishes and is then followed by a loud
track, which is most likely excessively loud for a shop. Or conversely I
start with a loud track, set the level and then it's followed by a quiet
track and the shop goes quiet.
>
>        I have no intention of applying whatever process to the media
machine, the tracks on that remain as ripped. I only want to "fiddle" the
tracks on the memory stick. As this is on an Android tablet, quite a cheap
one at that, I'm also not sure how whizz bang the media player is so if I
can get away with the tracks being as "standard" as possible would be good
- my reading earlier on in this thread leads me to believe ReplayGain may
not, although I'll prepared to test, be supported.
>
>        So with that background, normalise or ReplayGain?
>

LOL don't tear your hair out, bro :-)

My suggestion:

1. Go find someone with a PC, install "foobar2000" music player, load all
your tracks, and let it apply Replaygain

2. Go to the Android Mark... uh, Google Play Store, and search for
"replaygain". There are several music players that will honor replaygain
tags. Some of them are free.

Rgds,

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Andrew Lowe]

On 21/05/2012 10:51 PM, Pandu Poluan wrote:
>
> On May 21, 2012 9:18 PM, "Andrew Lowe" <agl@wht.com.au
> <mailto:agl@wht.com.au>> wrote:
>  >
>
> [ze schnipp]
>
>  >        Aarrrggghhh, I'm getting confused. More background on my
> original question. I work in a liquor store and the manager insists on
> playing the usual crappy FM radio station, "MORE HITS WHEN YOU WANT THEM
> AND WE HAVE THE BEST VARIETY......blah blah blah". I'm going crazy so
> I've loaded up a memory stick with music from my media machine and using
> a small Android tablet, play the music through the sound system instead
> of the radio. As you can guess this is not audiophile central, a cheap,
> quite old "3 in 1" sound system, one speaker one end of the shop,
> another in the middle of the shop.
>  >
>  >        I can't do the turn up/turn down thingy as I might set the
> level when I start, and it may happen to be a quiet song. I then head
> down the other end of the shop, the track finishes and is then followed
> by a loud track, which is most likely excessively loud for a shop. Or
> conversely I start with a loud track, set the level and then it's
> followed by a quiet track and the shop goes quiet.
>  >
>  >        I have no intention of applying whatever process to the media
> machine, the tracks on that remain as ripped. I only want to "fiddle"
> the tracks on the memory stick. As this is on an Android tablet, quite a
> cheap one at that, I'm also not sure how whizz bang the media player is
> so if I can get away with the tracks being as "standard" as possible
> would be good - my reading earlier on in this thread leads me to believe
> ReplayGain may not, although I'll prepared to test, be supported.
>  >
>  >        So with that background, normalise or ReplayGain?
>  >
>
> LOL don't tear your hair out, bro :-)
>
> My suggestion:
>
> 1. Go find someone with a PC, install "foobar2000" music player, load
> all your tracks, and let it apply Replaygain

Already have that covered, it's what I use on my research computer at Uni.

>
> 2. Go to the Android Mark... uh, Google Play Store, and search for
> "replaygain". There are several music players that will honor replaygain
> tags. Some of them are free.

Looks like something called "DeadBeef" will handle the situation. I'll 
install that tomorrow and test.

>
> Rgds,
>

	Thanks for the info,
		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Paul Hartman]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 8:07 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dipping only slightly further offtopic, are they still pressing vinyl?

Sales of vinyl LPs have actually gone up for the past 6 years, selling
3.5 million new LPs last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan which is
the organization that tracks music sales/downloads in stores and
online. Meanwhile, sales of CDs have declined since their peak in
2001.

> I believe there are a number of tools for automatically splitting and
> transcoding audio input from a vinyl player.

When I digitize vinyl or cassettes, I record the whole thing to a
single WAV file in Audacity. My turntable and cassette deck are hooked
up to my home stereo system, and the output from that is fed into my
line on on my PC. I try to adjust the input level manually to get as
loud as possible with no clipping, basically. I will run normalize on
the whole WAV afterward to see how close I was and listen to the
before and after to choose which one sounds better. I then use
wavbreaker to split it up into separate tracks. The process works well
for me.

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 11:26 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 8:07 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dipping only slightly further offtopic, are they still pressing vinyl?
>
> Sales of vinyl LPs have actually gone up for the past 6 years, selling
> 3.5 million new LPs last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan which is
> the organization that tracks music sales/downloads in stores and
> online. Meanwhile, sales of CDs have declined since their peak in
> 2001.
>
>> I believe there are a number of tools for automatically splitting and
>> transcoding audio input from a vinyl player.
>
> When I digitize vinyl or cassettes, I record the whole thing to a
> single WAV file in Audacity. My turntable and cassette deck are hooked
> up to my home stereo system, and the output from that is fed into my
> line on on my PC. I try to adjust the input level manually to get as
> loud as possible with no clipping, basically. I will run normalize on
> the whole WAV afterward to see how close I was and listen to the
> before and after to choose which one sounds better. I then use
> wavbreaker to split it up into separate tracks. The process works well
> for me.

Does your receiver have a 'tape' out? That's usually a decent
line-level output, so you shouldn't need to do any volume tweaking on
your inputs. (Assuming your turntable and cassette deck are sending
line-level out.)

What are you using for digitizing? Your motherboard's builtin, a PCI
board, or an external device? I don't have any non-noisy internal
audio devices available to me[1], so I tend to use external devices.

[1] To be expected. The inside of a computer case is noisy both
electrically and in EM.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[luis jure]

on 2012-05-21 at 22:14 Andrew Lowe wrote:

> I have no intention of applying whatever process to the media machine,
> the tracks on that remain as ripped. I only want to "fiddle" the tracks 
> on the memory stick.

your files are mp3, right? what you want to do is fairly simple, just use
media-sound/mp3gain

just direct your browser to http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ and get some
background. i haven't found much documentation on-line, just install it and
run mp3gain -h. 

i guess this is what you need, because:

1. the application does not perform normalization (which would mean
decoding and re-encoding ), it only adjusts the replaygain tag in the mp3
file;

2. the adjustment is not based on peak amplitude, but on the ReplayGain
"loudness" algorithm (don't know much of the details, but basically it's
RMS calculation with some psychoacoustic adjustments, based on the "lodness
curve").

check these options:

-r - apply Track gain automatically (all files set to equal loudness)
-k - automatically lower Track/Album gain to not clip audio
-a - apply Album gain automatically (files are all from the same
     album: a single gain change is applied to all files, so their
     loudness relative to each other remains unchanged, but the average
     album loudness is normalized)

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 11:26 AM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 8:07 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Dipping only slightly further offtopic, are they still pressing vinyl?
>>
>> Sales of vinyl LPs have actually gone up for the past 6 years, selling
>> 3.5 million new LPs last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan which is
>> the organization that tracks music sales/downloads in stores and
>> online. Meanwhile, sales of CDs have declined since their peak in
>> 2001.
>>
>>> I believe there are a number of tools for automatically splitting and
>>> transcoding audio input from a vinyl player.
>>
>> When I digitize vinyl or cassettes, I record the whole thing to a
>> single WAV file in Audacity. My turntable and cassette deck are hooked
>> up to my home stereo system, and the output from that is fed into my
>> line on on my PC. I try to adjust the input level manually to get as
>> loud as possible with no clipping, basically. I will run normalize on
>> the whole WAV afterward to see how close I was and listen to the
>> before and after to choose which one sounds better. I then use
>> wavbreaker to split it up into separate tracks. The process works well
>> for me.
>
> Does your receiver have a 'tape' out? That's usually a decent
> line-level output, so you shouldn't need to do any volume tweaking on
> your inputs. (Assuming your turntable and cassette deck are sending
> line-level out.)

When I am adjusting the level I mean I'm adjusting the input volume in
Audacity/ALSA (since not every record/tape/radio station comes in at
the same volume). The receiver does indeed have a line-out that does
not change regardless of how I adjust the settings on the receiver
itself (with the exception of the hard buttons for Dolby/Chrome
tapes).

> What are you using for digitizing? Your motherboard's builtin, a PCI
> board, or an external device? I don't have any non-noisy internal
> audio devices available to me[1], so I tend to use external devices.

I'm using the built-in ports on the rear panel which are noiseless as
far as I can tell.

Front panel is horrible, though. BZZ BZZZ EEEE BZZZ BZZ EE EEEE BZZZZ. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Stroller]

On 21 May 2012, at 02:07, Michael Mol wrote:
>>> ...
>>> All digital Led Zep releases (i.e. including all CDs) are notoriously poorly remastered, with excessive gain applied.
>>> 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
>>> 
>>> So far they have deteriorated with each remastering / re-release.
>>> 
>>> Huge threads on the Steve Hoffman forums discussing this, if you want to cork sniff.
>> 
>> I can attest to this - Led Zep II - awful. An older disk, not even a
>> remaster.  I can only play it at moderate levels - it loses all it's dynamic
>> range at higher levels.  A big disappointment.
> 
> Dipping only slightly further offtopic, are they still pressing vinyl?
> I believe there are a number of tools for automatically splitting and
> transcoding audio input from a vinyl player.


MoFi are doing some lovely releases - I've bought a handful of their (expensive) SACDs, but they do vinyl, too. Looks like they use very good quality materials.  

The lads on the Steve Hoffman forums seemed to be generally saying that the best Led Zep CDs are the very early ones - I think these were released even before the 1990 boxed set [1] - and that these are very cheap in the USA (but I think you have to search and find them secondhand). Yet they also refer to some Japanese releases, implying these are the ones they refer to. Not only may finding a decent version be a chore, but so is understanding what to find!

Anyway, to answer your question: the thread I read was primarily concerned with CD releases, but yeah, a couple of those guys stated their vinyl copies were *much* better. 

Stroller.



[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin_Boxed_Set

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[luis jure]

el 2012-05-20 a las 21:48 Nikos Chantziaras escribió:

> On 20/05/12 12:41, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
> > Just for sake of correctness, what the op wants is called
> > normalization, in the world of sound edition.
> 
> Actually, no.  That's not what he wants.  Normalization simply adjusts 
> to 0db.  How loud something sounds however is not a simple matter of 
> what the maximum peak of a waveform is.  ReplayGain actually analyzes 
> the music to tell how loud it *sounds*, not how loud it actually is.

[...]

> Normalization makes audio equally loud for hardware.  ReplayGain makes 
> audio equally loud for humans. :-)

 
actually, that isn't quite correct either... that's not the difference
between normalization and replaygain, you are mixing different things.

- normalization is process that modifies all the data in a file to adjust
  it to a reference level. as such, it only works in uncompressed audio;

- replaygain is an algorithm that tries to estimate the perceived loudness
  of a sound file, and calculates the gain level needed during playback
  (hence the name) to adjust it to a reference loudness level. this gain
  level is written in the metadata of the file (not all file formats
  support it), and has to be understood by the playback device. it does
  not modify the actual audio data (that is, it does not normalize).

now, normalization does not "simply adjust to 0dB", you can of course
normalize to whatever level you want (usually, *not* 0dB). 

moreover, normalization doesn't necessarily mean peak level normalization,
there's also loudness normalization. RMS normalization its most basic
form of loudness normalization, but there are more complex algorithms
that take into account the response curve of the human ear (like the
replaygain algorithm). 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Pandu Poluan]

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On May 21, 2012 11:22 PM, "luis jure" <ljc@internet.com.uy> wrote:
>
> on 2012-05-21 at 22:14 Andrew Lowe wrote:
>
> > I have no intention of applying whatever process to the media machine,
> > the tracks on that remain as ripped. I only want to "fiddle" the tracks
> > on the memory stick.
>
> your files are mp3, right? what you want to do is fairly simple, just use
> media-sound/mp3gain
>
> just direct your browser to http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ and get some
> background. i haven't found much documentation on-line, just install it
and
> run mp3gain -h.
>
> i guess this is what you need, because:
>
> 1. the application does not perform normalization (which would mean
> decoding and re-encoding ), it only adjusts the replaygain tag in the mp3
> file;
>
> 2. the adjustment is not based on peak amplitude, but on the ReplayGain
> "loudness" algorithm (don't know much of the details, but basically it's
> RMS calculation with some psychoacoustic adjustments, based on the
"lodness
> curve").
>
> check these options:
>
> -r - apply Track gain automatically (all files set to equal loudness)
> -k - automatically lower Track/Album gain to not clip audio
> -a - apply Album gain automatically (files are all from the same
>     album: a single gain change is applied to all files, so their
>     loudness relative to each other remains unchanged, but the average
>     album loudness is normalized)
>

Unfortunately, that only works with mp3 files.

Since the OP explicitly mentions ogg, I can only recommend foobar2000.

That said, if OP is willing to transcode his ogg (and flac, if any)
collection to mp3, then I agree that mp3gain is the best, failsafe
alternative (i.e., since it tweaks the "global gain" parameter of the mp3
file, virtually all music players will be compatible).

Rgds,

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