replaygain - alway loses volume instead of gaining... :(

[polluxx2006]

hello,

i understood what replaygain is for - but i dont really understand, why it doesnt work:

in foobar2000 i scanned an older album and applied album gain. but instead of increasing the volume,
gain was set to -3,95db. and as i turned ablum gain on on my player (iriver h320) it gets lower,
NOT louder... can anybody please tell me how this works?

thanks
oliver

[saratoga]

in foobar2000 i scanned an older album and applied album gain. but instead of increasing the volume,
gain was set to -3,95db. and as i turned ablum gain on on my player (iriver h320) it gets lower,
NOT louder... can anybody please tell me how this works?

Replaygain adjusts track to have a common reference level, which is generally much lower.  Raising the volume digitally can be done, but it usually leads to clipping which renders the track unlistenable. 

Take a look at the replaygain peak value for your track.  Is it much lower then 1?

[evilnick]

You might find http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain quite useful for info about replaygain.

[polluxx2006]

i did.

okay.. so the only way it makes sense is to scan all albums on my player
and apply album gain to alle the albums, right?

ok, and after that - should i adjust a specific pre-amp gain?

[saratoga]

i did.

okay.. so the only way it makes sense is to scan all albums on my player
and apply album gain to alle the albums, right?

ok, and after that - should i adjust a specific pre-amp gain?

You can use the preamp value to adjust how far down replaygain drops the volume.  Combined with the "prevent clipping" option you won't get distortion.  But if you raise the preamp too much volume might not be equal between different tracks. 

That said, scanning everything is pretty easy.  Add to foobar from your player, start scanning, write back to the files. 

[polluxx2006]

my purpose: i have one player only with albums and i want all the albums (surely NOT the track) have the same loudness.

whats still paradox is: if replaygain is said to be an adjustment between albums, when would it make
sense to scan only ONE album with the album gain option?

cheers,
oliver

[saratoga]

my purpose: i have one player only with albums and i want all the albums (surely NOT the track) have the same loudness.

Then scan them all with replaygain.

whats still paradox is: if replaygain is said to be an adjustment between albums, when would it make
sense to scan only ONE album with the album gain option?

You can set all tracks on an album to have the same volume ("album mode") or all tracks to have the same volume ("shuffle" or "radio" mode).  I believe this is discussed in the manual.

[gbl08ma]

This doesn't directly answer to your question, it's kind of comment/personal opinion. But I think it is pertinent.
If you can't understand the replay gain functions (nor do I, for me they don't seem to have any effect), or they don't work as desirable, I think you should do like me and edit the tracks with a editor like Audacity, manually adjusting the volume for each track (and perhaps for different sections of the same track) and then when you play your tracks on any player (even if it doesn't support replay gain), it will always have the tracks at a common volume level.

[polluxx2006]

hehe...

i chose replaygain beacuse i dont want to touch the original files (although i know this woulkd be okay, too).

still, album gain doesnt make any sense to me for only ONE album. why i metion this?
beacuse foonbar has such a function.
(with track gain its clear: same loudness with every track; but "same loudness with every album only
makes sense with more than one album).

okay, now i applied RG on all albums omn the player. when i add more albums
ia have to do it again for ALL albums right?

[markun]

okay, now i applied RG on all albums omn the player. when i add more albums
ia have to do it again for ALL albums right?

No, you don't have to rescan your existing albums.

Replaygain changes the gain of a track to give it the same loudness on average as some reference loudness.

When you play an album, the end of one track might be the beginning of the next track. With track gain you could have a jump in loudness from one to the next if they have different gain values.

Album gain uses the same gain for all tracks in the same album. The average of the whole album is at the desired loudness, but the individual tracks remain their relative loudness differences.

I have scanned all my albums with replaygain and almost never have to adjust the volume when I'm listening to my sansa clip+ with rockbox.