Archive for the ‘replaygain’ tag
Applying ReplayGain more easily with Foobar2000 and MP3Tag
I previously wrote about applying ReplayGain to MP3 files with a combination of Foobar2000 and MP3Tag. I’ve come up with a slightly easier way to reduce some of the manual steps.
I found out that both Foobar2000 and MP3Tag both supports some limited command line operations, and with a tiny bit of legwork, you can add a right-click (context menu) way of making this process easier.
With this approach, you can now right-click songs, select a context menu option and Foobar2000 will automatically apply ReplayGain at the track-level then MP3Tag will automatically open up and add the songs ready for you to apply the custom Action we previously created.
First, make sure you have Foobar2000 and MP3Tag installed.
Second, copy the following script and put it in a batch file and save it somewhere you can remember. I put mine in E:\Documents\ReplayGainScripts\ReplayGain.bat. I’m on an x64 system, so notice the environment variables highlighted in red which will need to be changed to %PROGRAMFILES% if you are on x86 (32-bit).
Getting MP3 songs to play at the same volume in iTunes and beyond
My music library consists of songs that I’ve acquired from a variety of sources such as web downloads, Amazon, iTunes, eMusic and rips from my own CDs.
One of my biggest pet peeves for the longest time is that songs and albums across my library vary in playback volume. Since I almost always listen to music in shuffle/random across the entire library (or within a specific genre), track-to-track volume differences are very noticeable. It’s particularly bad if I’m listening to through headphones.
By default, iTunes will analyze volume information on songs as you add them to your library. It stores volume normalization in an extended ID3 tag called “COMMENT ITUNNORM” which it will read and adjust playback volume before each song starts.
While iTunes handles this really well, it sucks if you also use other media player software or want to move to another music player in the future.
Since I wanted to future proof myself, I started investigating how I could have a more portable solution that would be player independent.
Solution: Replay Gain
After doing some searches, I stumbled upon various ways of analyzing audio files in order to normalize overall loudness of song playback. The most popular method seemed to be “Replay Gain” and it was getting a ton of support in 3rd party applications.
