ReplayGain

[simoncn]

My experience with track gain and album gain is different from your reasoning. I applied the dBpoweramp DSP effect to one of my albums to see what values would be produced. The album gain value (applied to all tracks) was -0.53 dB and the track gain values varied from +23.97 dB to -3.8 dB. These large differences in track gain values are because some tracks contain louder music and some tracks contain quieter music. It would not make sense (at least to me) to play this album with the loud tracks made quieter and the quiet tracks made louder.

I have other albums whose average recorded level is louder or quieter than this album. If I am playing a louder album after this album, it would be useful to have the server use the album gain values to automatically reduce the level when the second album starts playing. I don't want to change the level in the middle of either album because I want to preserve the relative loudness or quietness of the tracks within each album.

The same would apply when listening to a playlist containing individual tracks selected from many different albums. I would want to use the album gain value for each track because I don't want tracks containing quiet music to be played louder just because they are in a playlist.

I think the only time that the track gain value would be useful is when listening to a file that isn't part of an album. In this case, the file wouldn't have an album gain value and the only value that can be used is the track gain.