ReplayGain

[Pepsican]

(18-06-2016 17:22)Servatius Wrote:  I see your point and understand the decision. So I thought about alternatives.

First of all, users like Pepsican owning albums with extremely different loudness levels can still improve their situation: In the original content directory, maintain all your audio files, tag them, and set the ReplayGain info. Then use a converter (like foobar2000's convert feature) to generate loudness-leveled versions of your files into a second content directory by applying album gain. Configure the converter to transfer metadata but not ReplayGain info (which you applied). The conversion will leave your original files untouched, but will put variants with identical tags but modified audio data into the extra directory tree. Then set MinimServer's contentDir option to the loudness-leveled content directory. Then your playlists from different albums are played with album-leveled loudness. The only thing you need is some extra disc space (cheap) and a couple of hours for the conversion (let your PC do this for you over night).

Never make any manual changes in the loudness-leveled directory tree. When adding new audio files or changing tags, always do this in your original master tree. When you are finished, run the conversion on the new or modified files to get or overwrite the loudness-leveled variants in the other directory. You also have the options to set the MinimServer contentDir temporarily back to the original directory in a phase of heavy tagging, or to run a modified conversion using track gain in the night before a party.

I get what you mean, and I do that for my car stereo, which can't do ReplayGain. But it would effectively mean doubling my disk space for music files. So, there is a price tag attached to the workaround. And for some, it may mean upgrading the NAS itself rather than just add disks. It also goes against the suggested order of events: to first upsample and then apply the gain.