[DaveBlake]

Why have a "reduced gain" option? Well playing the track at a lower volume will sound diffrent to letting the audio engine handle clipping just at the places it occurs, and some people may want that. But more than that, AE clipping protection is CPU expensive, so those running Kodi on limited processors will have the AE protection disabled. At least with the "reduced gain" approach those files with rgain and peak can be adjusted not to clip without any expensive processing. But the option to avoid clipping protection by normalising volume will reappear in v18, if my PR is approved.

Any news on this one?

I use latest Kodi 18 64 bits test build for windows and do not see this option

Still not merged to kodi 18 or not merged to the 64 bits test build?

No restoring the reduce replay gain option has not been merged into v18 yet.

Generally for my progress see this thread

As you can see there is a lag between me going things and them getting merged into the nightlies. To help matters I am going to try and keep a music test build going with all the latest music things, but the current one of that doesn't have the reduced gain in it either. It will eventaully, or maybe that change will go straight into nightly, either way watch that thread

[Gracus]

Why have a "reduced gain" option? Well playing the track at a lower volume will sound diffrent to letting the audio engine handle clipping just at the places it occurs, and some people may want that. But more than that, AE clipping protection is CPU expensive, so those running Kodi on limited processors will have the AE protection disabled. At least with the "reduced gain" approach those files with rgain and peak can be adjusted not to clip without any expensive processing. But the option to avoid clipping protection by normalising volume will reappear in v18, if my PR is approved.

Any news on this one?

I use latest Kodi 18 64 bits test build for windows and do not see this option

Still not merged to kodi 18 or not merged to the 64 bits test build?

No restoring the reduce replay gain option has not been merged into v18 yet.

Generally for my progress see this thread

As you can see there is a lag between me going things and them getting merged into the nightlies. To help matters I am going to try and keep a music test build going with all the latest music things, but the current one of that doesn't have the reduced gain in it either. It will eventaully, or maybe that change will go straight into nightly, either way watch that thread

Thanks to you to take time to answer!

No pressure!
Just wanted to have some fresh news and didn't know you have a thread talking about all you try to fix in kodi's music department

Keep up the good work

[Gaspode]

Sorry to raise this issue again in an old post but I'm trying to understand if this issue has been fixed or not as there's a lot of detail here and I'm only just getting my head around the concept. I've tried music files with and without replaygain in Krypton 17.1 and its not working for me.

Thanks in advance

[meowmoo]

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2551931

[DaveBlake]

Yes the identified issue was fixed in 17.1.
You may have foud something new, or most likely it is a tagging issue.

I've tried music files with and without replaygain in Krypton 17.1 and its not working for me.

You are going to have to provide more details. Start with an example of a file tagged to set the replaygain to something, maybe also provide a link to a debug log of this file being played.

[Gaspode]

Dave....

Thanks for the quick reply. I will provide examples and post a debug log asap. However, here's a quick run down of what I did.

I've just switched from using Windows Media Centre to Kodi on both the same PC and a Raspberry Pi/Libreelec setup. Whereas we played random music via WMC and had no need to adjust the volume, when doing the same with Kodi on both machines, we found a need to frequently adjust the volume based on what was playing. This volume difference was noticeable in both Party Mode and Non Party Mode playback.

A search of the issue led me to this thread and I started to investigate the topic of Replaygain.

Both setups PI/PC have the 'Use Track Level' option set and at the default of 89db.

I checked an mp3 file using 'Mp3Tag' and it confirmed that there were no Replay Tags present. I then took just this MP3 file and using Audacity produced a copy that was 30db lower in amplitude.

Using 'MP3Gain' I did a track analysis on these two files and it produced the Replaygain and Replaypeak tags as follows:-

Original - RPG > +6.11db; RPP > 0.565735
Quiet Copy - RPG > +31.1db; RPP > 0.31365

Using Audacity again I verified that neither file had had the actual amplitude adjusted.

I replayed these back on both setups and the Quiet Copy was not volume adjusted and barely audible leading me to suspect that the tags where not being honoured.

If I understand the process correctly then it seems to me that the Player ( or something) should read the value of the Replaygain tags and add this value to the current default setting for the pre-amp, hence producing some sort of leveling of the volume across tracks.

I'll try a few more tests but I will post examples and logs as soon as the wife lets me play again

Thxs

[DaveBlake]

Thanks for explaining your approach so far. Yes the player reads the replaygain and peak tags and adjusts the output accordingly. The option to avoid clipping by reducing gain is restored in v18 (one of this things discuss in this thread), but AFAIK replay gain tags are working in v17.1 onwards

I still think it is most likely a tagging issue - are the values from MP3Gain actually in the files? For mp3 files tagged with ID3 v2.4 tags Kodi is looking for
TXXX:REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK, and
TXXX:REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN
although Mp3Tag probably leaves off the TXXX frame part when listing tags.

As I have often been heard to say, show me your tags.

[Gaspode]

Dave.....

Thanks for the key piece of information about what Kodi is looking for - ID3 v 2.4 tags. MP3Gain does not seem to produce this version of tags. When it's done the analysis and I look at the results in MP3tag it only reports APEv2 tags although it does show the Replaygain/Peak values.

If I then use MP3Tag to write out the tags I can set the option to produce ID3 v2.4 and once this is done Kodi picks up the tags and normalises the track volumes.

I don't know enough about this but are Replay tags also valid in other tag versions? If so could Kodi be programmed to be somewhat independent of tag version in this respect?

Many thanks for help in sorting this out. I now have the large task of adding the gain tags and then saving them as ID3v2.4. I need a rainy day :-)

Thanks again

[meowmoo]

mp3gain will not write the needed tags to you files, and its pretty outdated too.
I would recommend using foobar if you wanna add ReplayGain Tags to your Music Files

[DaveBlake]

So it was a tagging issue, I win the bet with myself

Kodi supports a variety of music file and tag formats, and replay gain in most of them (inc APEv2), I just gave ID3 v2.4 as an example. See http://kodi.wiki/view/Music_tagging#Tags_Kodi_reads. Mixing tag formats within a file is not so smart, stick to one format, if you have both APE and ID3 tags the you need to tell Kodi to look at the APE ones as well, so better just not to mix.

Sounds like MP3Gain is not going to add tags for you nicely so use something else.

I don't know if ID3 v2.3 supports replay gain, I suspect not (but someone correct me).

Consistent and comprehensive tagging is good for the soul
But pick a rainy day (today being the best summer's day so far this year).

[Gaspode]

mp3gain will not write the needed tags to you files, and its pretty outdated too.
I would recommend using foobar if you wanna add ReplayGain Tags to your Music Files

Thanks for the reply. I did come across mention of Foobar2000 so I think I'll give this a shot as if may provide a one stop solution.

So it was a tagging issue, I win the bet with myself

Kodi supports a variety of music file and tag formats, and replay gain in most of them (inc APEv2), I just gave ID3 v2.4 as an example. See http://kodi.wiki/view/Music_tagging#Tags_Kodi_reads. Mixing tag formats within a file is not so smart, stick to one format, if you have both APE and ID3 tags the you need to tell Kodi to look at the APE ones as well, so better just not to mix.

Sounds like MP3Gain is not going to add tags for you nicely so use something else.

I don't know if ID3 v2.3 supports replay gain, I suspect not (but someone correct me).

Consistent and comprehensive tagging is good for the soul
But pick a rainy day (today being the best summer's day so far this year).

Well I'd prefer to call it a draw as the tags where there but not in the correct form :-)

Rain forecast for the rest of the day here on Skye so maybe a chance to plug and play.

Thanks all

[Gracus]

Thanks for the reply. I did come across mention of Foobar2000 so I think I'll give this a shot as if may provide a one stop solution.

Should be easy with foobar 2000

Once installed go to settings to:
-set your music folder
-set the MP3 tag options

Restart just to be sure

Then on the main menu (1):
-right click on "all music" and go to "replaygain"
-choose "per file scan" to have them at the same volume

Let foobar scan your files and once done select "update file tags"

You are done!

If you think you could have more music files to tag later for replaygain then here is a little trick:
-create a "test" folder on your HDD
-in foobar set it as the only library source

Now that it is done, if you need to add replaygain value to new files:
-put those files in the test folder
-follow the tagging procedure I gave you in (1)
-once done put the music files in your music folder

It will allow you ta add replaygain to new files without tagging already tagged files

[DaveBlake]

Well I'd prefer to call it a draw as the tags where there but not in the correct form :-)

Rain forecast for the rest of the day here on Skye so maybe a chance to plug and play.

Kodi will read APE tags, even read a mixed file. If you wanted the APE tags for replay gain to take priority of the other ID3 tags, which by absence were saying that replaygain was not set, then you just need to tell it that in advanced settings.

But honestly nice consistent tagging will serve you far better in the long run.
A nice wet "tagging day" down in Cornwall too today, after such a scorcher yesterday.

[meowmoo]

Thanks for the reply. I did come across mention of Foobar2000 so I think I'll give this a shot as if may provide a one stop solution.

....
-right click on "all music" and go to "replaygain"
-choose "per file scan" to have them at the same volume

Let foobar scan your files and once done select "update file tags"

You are done!

If you think you could have more music files to tag later for replaygain then here is a little trick:
-create a "test" folder on your HDD
-in foobar set it as the only library source
.....

1. I would use "scan selection as Album(by tag)", so you keep the Album dynamic, and the Track_Gain tag is stored in the Mp3 anyways.
2. Just use the filter https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9bSf6...ldlM0hSRHM

if you new to foobar it looks kinda boring so to get you started, here are a few themes
http://customize.org/foobar

MusicBrainz Picard and Foobar is all you need to Organizer and Play your Music

[Gracus]

Thanks for the reply. I did come across mention of Foobar2000 so I think I'll give this a shot as if may provide a one stop solution.

....
-right click on "all music" and go to "replaygain"
-choose "per file scan" to have them at the same volume

Let foobar scan your files and once done select "update file tags"

You are done!

If you think you could have more music files to tag later for replaygain then here is a little trick:
-create a "test" folder on your HDD
-in foobar set it as the only library source
.....

1. I would use "scan selection as Album(by tag)", so you keep the Album dynamic, and the Track_Gain tag is stored in the Mp3 anyways.
2. Just use the filter https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9bSf6...ldlM0hSRHM

if you new to foobar it looks kinda boring so to get you started, here are a few themes
http://customize.org/foobar

MusicBrainz Picard and Foobar is all you need to Organizer and Play your Music

1. matter of taste... I should not have specify a scan based on my preferences
2. you are right, I forgot about filters.

Do not know if it is really needed to install a foobar skin just to use it to tag music files
I prefer this one (not in your link) : http://tedgo.deviantart.com/art/DarkOne-v4-360862076