Support and General Use > Audio Playback, Database and Playlists
Would it be better for Replay Gain to be off by default?
xpmule:
interesting.
i make sure my collection ALWAYS has album and track gain tags.
but i don't usually use it at all but would prefer it off by default myself.
if people know what it is I'm sure they will investigate how to turn it on if needed.
i wonder though is the config for it the standard reference settings ?
in case some viewers don't know what this is about see this page maybe..
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ReplayGain_1.0_specification
and maybe google "Loudness Wars"
Julian67:
--- Quote from: xpmule on October 07, 2012, 07:02:22 PM ---interesting.
i make sure my collection ALWAYS has album and track gain tags.
but i don't usually use it at all but would prefer it off by default myself.
--- End quote ---
I do much the same. My transcoding process is automated: it requires no effort from me to have RG data added to the metadata so it's done. I don't usually use RG but have set up my transcode script to add RG data because it may be useful sometimes/occasionally/one day, maybe.
--- Quote from: xpmule ---if people know what it is I'm sure they will investigate how to turn it on if needed.
--- End quote ---
This would be my assumption as well and I do find it really surpising that such an intrusive mechanism would be on by default in any audio player. It seems to presume that the listener listens to a random selection of amplified music. My assumption would be that I have no idea who the listener is or what they like so vanilla makes the best default and let the person doing the tasting add the syrup. Definitely don't hide a raw chilli pepper in the middle.
I've encountered several times the idea that RG is almost certain not to cause audible distortion/artefacts so is de facto harmless. But this is only assured to be true for gain values of zero or lower. I think I've demonstrated with the sample I linked that in fact RG can cause severe distortion even at a playback level well below minus 20 dB. And that is with a track which is never, ever going to clip under normal conditions:
There seems to be a widely accepted but erroneous assumption that positive album gain values are unusual and that very high album gain values (i.e. 4 dB and higher) are almost unheard of. But as soon as you move away from amplified music and into the arena of unamplified music then positive album gain values are the norm and very high values are found surpisingly often.
Replay Gain makes sense in a world where its application means attenuation or very tiny amplification. But that "world view" is actually quite narrow: there are multiple traditions of unamplified music with vast repertoires and huge numbers of recordings and listeners. People didn't stop listening to Bach, Handel, Palestrina et al, or to Indian or Arabian classical or west African traditional music (lots of unamplified strings). Almost all of it will have positive RG values which if applied can make some of it clip. For anyone who listens only to amplified music this doesn't matter even a little bit, but for several billion other people it makes a difference.
RG with clip protection is a much better default than RG without, but it still poses a problem which is that the clip protection works on a per-track basis and can make big differences to the relative loudness between adjacent tracks. There are plenty of albums which are gapless where the track split points are in effect index points in the middle of unbroken audio, and even more albums where the tracks form part of a single work (they are intended to only ever be heard together and in a particular coherent sequence). It's really hard to think of anything positive to say about a mechanism which at a musically arbitrary point might attenuate or raise the level by several dB.
Anyway enabling clip protection is a good move as at least nobody is going to risk damaging their headphones, or find themselves pulling their buds out as quick as they can before posting a complaint about squelching, upper harmonic distortion or whatever term is currently preferred for "it sounds awful, it made me cry and my ears still hurt".
I have to go now as my new Hannah Montana Forever Soundtrack download has completed and I can't wait to make a karaoke mix and then spend the night singing along....
saratoga:
You don't need to demonstrate that the 89 db reference level can cause clipping. This has been known for over a decade. 89 db was chosen over the safer 83 db because it was extremely rare for clipping to occur and so 83 db was judged to not be worthwhile. But it can occur, particularly if your music is mastered oddly. Its just extremely rare.
Clipping protection isn't a bad idea, but Most clipping isn't audible and in fact nearly all modern music clips a bit in mp3 format. So if you enable it you will have less effective volume equalization but little gain except for exceptional tracks.
Julian67:
--- Quote from: saratoga ---...Its just extremely rare.
--- End quote ---
Yes but that's an assertion, not a fact, and it only holds good with amplified music, which seems to have led to it being generally accepted. My point was that with unamplified music that "extremely rare" situation is encountered a lot less rarely, and nothing has to be "mastered oddly". "Loudness War" mastering basically doesn't exist in classical music; full dynamic range is the aim (and the norm) and the less compression the better. Another example:
This time the positive album gain is only 1.63 dB
--- Code: ---TITLE=God is with us
ARTIST=John Tavener
ALBUM=Byzantia
TRACKNUMBER=02
GENRE=Classical
COMPOSER=John Tavener
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.98935145
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-3.15 dB
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK=0.98935145
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN=+1.63 dB
--- End code ---
http://www.filefactory.com/file/2fmdp7je1bjx/n/02_-_God_is_with_us_ogg
This clips at about 5m 30s if album gain is applied (hard clicks in both channels), exactly as you'd expect when looking at the waveform and wondering what would happen if you added another dB or two at 5m 30s.....
And another, this time an orchestral work:
--- Code: ---TITLE=SinfonÃa Sevillana: 3
TITLE=Fiesta en San Juan de Aznalfarache
ARTIST=Orquesta Filarmonica de Gran Canaria, Adrian Leaper
ALBUM=SinfonÃa Sevillana
DATE=1999-01-01
TRACKNUMBER=3
GENRE=Classical
COMPOSER=Turina
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.98125243
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=+1.99 dB
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK=0.98125243
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN=+3.49 dB
--- End code ---
http://www.filefactory.com/file/58supg72nnj/n/03_-_Sinfon_a_Sevillana-_3_-_Fiesta_en_San_Juan_de_Aznalfarache_ogg
This one is more typical of what many people think of as classical music - it's orchestral and ends with a loud crescendo. It's very loud indeed and there are lots of instruments making lots of sounds and you could probably listen to that crescendo with RG album mode and not think anything was amiss, but listening again without any RG it becomes clear that RG did indeed introduce distortion. It isn't as obvious as hard clicks or or a soprano's voice breaking up and it's easy to see how people might describe it in various terms that are hard to quantify and hard to understand by anyone not sharing the experience.
The tracks I've used as examples are not oddly mastered or unusual repertoire. You could go through any collection of unamplified music and find lots of albums containing tracks using a full dynamic range and for which RG processing will have applied a positive album gain higher than the track gain, at which point you've introduced the possibility of clipping.
tl ;dr summary:
It isn't extremely rare, it's only as rare as unamplified music - it's very common!
saratoga:
--- Quote from: Julian67 on October 08, 2012, 09:37:35 AM ---tl ;dr summary:
It isn't extremely rare, it's only as rare as unamplified music - it's very common!
--- End quote ---
Yes, but such music is just a tiny fraction of all the music out there hence the compromise.
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