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

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

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