I want all the tracks in my
music collection of MP3 files to play at the same volume
so that I don't need to keep tweaking the volume up and down for each track.
ReplayGain has been developed to analyse the volume
of each track as heard by the human ear.
Once you know how loud a track is, you can then alter the volume of the track,
either up or down to make the track the same perceived volume
as all the other tracks in your collection.
I've discovered a couple of different ways of implementing ReplayGain.
The first is used by a program called MP3Gain,
which analyses each track and calculates the gain required to increase
or decrease the volume to the volume that you specify.
MP3Gain then changes the gain value stored in the MP3
encoding by changing the MP3 file.
MP3Gain only changes the gain.
So it will only change the volume of the music.
It will not degrade or even improve the quality of the music
stored in the MP3 file.
The second method performs the same analysis
to calculate a ReplayGain value for each track.
But this method stores the gain as one of the tags in the MP3 file.
Tags are normally used to store information
such as the name of the artist, the album and the track, etc.
Your media player can then read the ReplayGain
value stored in the MP3 file's tags
and then change the gain accordingly.
So that all tracks have the same volume.
This is the method used by the media player Foobar2000.
I duplicate my music collection on a number of different desktop
computers, laptops, phones, tablets, etc.
I don't know if all of the media players on all of these devices support
reading the ReplayGain value stored from the MP3 tags.
In my situation, I therefore prefer the first method
where the gain value stored in the MP3 file is edited.
I can then simply duplicate my music collection across all of my devices,
and I know that regardless of the capabilities of the media player
all tracks will have the same volume when played on all of my devices.
If you want to use MP3Gain to change the volume of all of your MP3 files
so that they all have the same volume, download MP3Gain.exe
from mp3gain.sourceforge.net and install.
Run MP3Gain and add the top level
folder for your entire music collection.
If you have left the option Add Subfolders ticked,
then all the subfolders beneath the top level folder will be searched.
I have set up an MP3 collection of three
MP3 files to demonstrate MP3Gain in this video.
You can see that there are two levels of subfolders
beneath the top level folder for the final track.
There are two steps to implementing ReplayGain on this MP3 collection.
First, click on track analysis.
This will analyse each track and calculate a ReplayGain value,
which is shown in the Track Gain column so that all the tracks are played
at the normal volume of 89dB.
The second and final step is to click on Track Gain.
This changes the actual gain value stored in the MP3 files
so that all three tracks now have the same volume.
The volume column shows that all tracks
are now very close to the target of 89dB.
MP3Gain can only change the volume in steps of 1.5dB,
so each track will not be at an identical volume.
However, the human error will not be able to hear the minor differences in volume
between each track.
The track gain column has also been changed to 0dB for all tracks
because the MP3 files have now been edited to change the volume so that the track
gain required to make each track the same volume is now 0dB i.e.
no change.
This shows that the process is quick and easy but if you want to know
a little more detail about what is actually happening to your MP3 files
as you go through the above process, then watch the remainder of this video.
If we go back to the start of the process and show both MP3Gain window
and also show the MP3 tags using the MP3tag app
it is possible to see exactly what happens.
We're back at the start of the process now with the original unedited MP3 files.
Click on Add folder to
add all the MP3 files in your collection.
MP3tag has been set up to show
only the ReplayGain and MP3 gain tags.
There is more information on how to set up MP3tag towards the end of the video.
At this stage MP3 tag shows that there is nothing stored in
any of the ReplayGain or MP3 gain tags.
If you now click on the track analysis button in MP3Gain
and when it is finished analysing.
Click on the Refresh button in MP3tag.
You can see that the ReplayGain tags have now been populated
as well as the MP3 gain min max tag.
The MP3 gain undo tag is still empty because at this stage the gain in the MP3
files has not been changed, so there's nothing to undo.
In MP3Gain you will see that the top row is red.
This is because there is a Y in the clipping column,
which indicates that the peak volumes on this track will be distorted.
If you now click on Track Gain the gain stored in the MP3 files is changed.
So if you play the MP3 file in any media
player, the volume will have now been changed.
MP3Gain has also updated the tags.
The undo tag now includes information.
This is so that you can now hit the undo button and change the gain
stored in the MP3 file back to the original gain.
Because the volume of the track has been changed the replay gain
and peak tabs have been updated with the new ReplayGain
and peak information for the new volume of the track.
If you want to undo the changes that MP3Gain has made, to the volume,
then click Modify Gain and Undo Changes.
Note that you have undone the changes to the gain,
but the MP3 tags are still saved in the MP3 file.
This means that if you clear the files and reload them again
at some later date, you do not need to do the Track Analysis again.
Because the analysis is stored in the tags.
This means that you can jump straight to the Track Gain button
MP3Gain
allows you to remove the tags from the MP3 file.
But don't forget that
if you remove the tags the volume of the MP3 file has changed.
All you have deleted is the ReplayGain and MP3Gain tags
in the MP3 files In order to view the ReplayGain
and MP3 tags in MP3tag,
you need to change the columns in MP3tag
by enabling APE tags
by clicking Tools, then Options.
Expand Tags in the left pane and click Mpeg.
Under Read click on APE so that the box is ticked.
Experimenting with MP3tag, it seems that MP3tag is not able
to display the tags that are defined using APE and ID3 at the same time.
Now that APE has been ticked, it will only display APE tags.
My MP3 tags with artist name, track name, etc.
are ID3 tags.
So when I tick APE I can no longer see the artist name and track name tags.
Frustrating, but not the end of the world.
For the purposes of this video,
I only want to show the APE tags for ReplayGain and MP3Gain,
so ticking APE and only seeing APE tags is not a problem.
You then need to manually add columns for the ReplayGain and MP3Gain tags.
Right click on the header for the table of tags and select customize columns.
The video shows my setup to view the ReplayGain and MP3Gain tags.
I've unticked all the artist name, track name and so on tags
because these are all ID3 tags
which are not visible now that APE tags have been enabled.
I've already set up the ReplayGain and MP3Gain tags.
You will need to click on New and define columns with the values shown on screen.
Note the % sign before and after the tags Value and that there are no spaces.
You can also copy these Value parameters
from the description of the YouTube video.
I hope that this video enables you to set up your collection
of MP3 files so that they all play at the same volume.