Best Dynamic Microphones Of All Time: The Top 6 List


Looking for some good dynamic mics to add to your locker? Well in this post, I reveal 6 of the greatest ones in music history. ~ Best Dynamic Microphones of all time: The Top 6 List

ReplayGain ~ Advanced Volume Normalization


ReplayGain is … a technique invented to achieve the same perceived playback loudness of audio files. ~ Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase

ReplayGain … allows players to normalize loudness for individual tracks or albums. This avoids the common problem of having to manually adjust volume levels between tracks when playing audio files from albums that have been mastered at different loudness levels. ~ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain

If you’re using track gain, every song is played at 89 dB; no song is any louder than any other. If you’re using album gain, tracks will be played at 89 dB plus or minus a few dB, depending on how much louder or quieter each track is relative to the other tracks on the album. By definition, album gain is not going to make all tracks as loud as possible; the quieter tracks are going to remain that much quieter than the louder tracks, and they’ll average out to 89. ~ Hydrogen Audio

Using ReplayGain in Foobar

(1) First set the ReplayGain target values:

Preferences / Playback / ReplayGain
Source mode: by playback order
Processing: apply gain and prevent clipping according to peak

Foobar2000 Preferences - Playback
Foobar2000 Preferences – Playback – ReplayGain

Recommended Values:

Set Preferences / Preamp / Without RG values: to around -8.0 db

If you are also playing tracks which aren’t RG-tagged, they’ll be playing quite loud in comparison to the RG-tagged ones. To mitigate that, you can set the “Without RG info” Preamp level to, say, -11.9. This will make the player pretend they have -11.9 dB album gain. Thus if you played a non-RG-tagged copy of that loudest track, it would be played at 89 dB instead of its natural 100.91 dB, and would thus match the level that all the RG-tagged tracks are played at. However, then the quieter non-RG-tagged tracks would still be that much quieter. So you may find -8 or so to be a better “without RG info” preamp level, on average.~ HA Forum

I usually set my non-RG preamp to somewhere in the range of -7.0 dB to -9.0 dB. ~ HA Forum

I recommend setting the slider labelled “Without RG info” to -8.0 (that’s minus eight) or less. ~ www.bobulous.org.uk/misc/Replay-Gain

If you listen to modern music -7dB/-10dB value should be correct. If you listen to older music, keep the value a bit lower because the average level of recently released tracks are higher. ~ eolindel.free.fr/foobar0.9/Replaygain

(2) Next scan files:

  • Select Files / Right mouse / ReplayGain / Scan selection as single album (adds album and track ReplayGain tags)
Context - ReplayGain
ReplayGain - Scanning - small

Once the files are scanned, they can be played.

True Peak Scanner

The foo_truepeak component scans ReplayGain, Dynamic Range, LUFS, PLR RMS values, etc.

Foobar ReplayGain Override Component

For older versions that lack the “by playback order” option, this component provides a way to specify which ReplayGain modes to use for each playback order. Track gain is probably desirable for random playback while with regular playback album gain is more suitable.

Preferences - ReplayGain override.PNG
Download ~ www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_rg_trn

Alternative ReplayGain

Alternative ReplayGain engine. Should be faster as it does not use FFT.

www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_arg

ReplayGain in Linux

www.bobulous.org.uk

ReplayGain in Winamp

WinAmp’s use of these RG tags is enabled / disabled via the General Preferences – Playback – Replay Gain options ~ forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=345520

ReplayGain DLL

Win32 dll to normalize wav pcm files using replaygain

sourceforge.net/projects/rspgain

Foobar2000 DSP Plugin:

foo_dsp_replaygain ~ Temporary Replaygain

Additional References:

wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain
wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain_1.0_specification
replaygain.hydrogenaud.io/proposal/index.html
replaygain.hydrogenaud.io/proposal/calibration.html
www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=96391
www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=35255
www.techspot.com/tweaks/foobar/index
stephan.win31.de/music.htm#rg-levels
forum.audacityteam.org/t/replaygain-plug-in/22589

Track Gain (relative to the ReplayGain target volume)
[%replaygain_track_gain%]

ReplayGain’s Track Volume
$if(%replaygain_track_gain%,$puts(X,$sub(8900,$replace(%replaygain_track_gain%,.,)))$ifgreater($get(X),9999,$substr($get(X),1,3).$substr($get(X),4,5),$substr($get(X),1,2).$substr($get(X),3,4)) dB))

Track Volume (-18dB is equivalent to the ReplayGain target volume of 89dB)
$if(%replaygain_track_gain%,$puts(X,$sub(-1800,$replace(%replaygain_track_gain%,.,)))$ifequal($get(X),0,0,$ifgreater($get(X),0,$replace(+$substr($num($get(X),4),1,2),+0,+),$replace($substr($num($get(X),5),1,3),-0,-))).$substr($num($get(X),5),4,5) dB)

Album Gain (relative to the ReplayGain target volume)
[%replaygain_album_gain%]

ReplayGain’s Album Volume
$if(%replaygain_album_gain%,$puts(X,$sub(8900,$replace(%replaygain_album_gain%,.,)))$ifgreater($get(X),9999,$substr($get(X),1,3).$substr($get(X),4,5),$substr($get(X),1,2).$substr($get(X),3,4)) dB))

Album Volume (-18dB is equivalent to the ReplayGain target volume of 89dB)
$if(%replaygain_album_gain%,$puts(X,$sub(-1800,$replace(%replaygain_album_gain%,.,)))$ifequal($get(X),0,0,$ifgreater($get(X),0,$replace(+$substr($num($get(X),4),1,2),+0,+),$replace($substr($num($get(X),5),1,3),-0,-))).$substr($num($get(X),5),4,5) dB)

Track Peak
[%replaygain_track_peak_db%]

hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=121273.msg1000424#msg1000424

Foobar2000 Tagging ~ Fixing Swapped Artist | Title Tag Info


Do you have albums where the artist’s names are in the track title field, and the title of the track is in the artist name field? Here’s how to fix this.

Reversed artist - track title - playlist

Start by checking the file names. If the file names have both artist name and track title information, then the fix is easy, just retag the files using the Automatically fill values function.

First, select the files, then open the Properties dialog window.

Reversed artist - track title - properties

Right click and select Automatically Fill Values…

Automatically fill values

Then with the source set to File names, fill in or select a Pattern which puts the information in the correct fields.

Reversed artist - track title - auto fill values.PNG

After you select Ok, Foobar will retag the files properly.

Reversed artist - track title - properties - fixed.PNG

However, if the file names don’t contain both artist names and track title information, you’ll have to rename the files from the tags first. Select the files then right click and select File Operations>Rename

Reversed artist - track title - rename.PNG

and  after the files have been renamed, carry out the rest of the above procedure.

Ex Falso / Quod Libet ~ Tag Editor / Player


Quod Libet is a GTK+-based audio player written in Python, using the Mutagen tagging library. It’s designed around the idea that you know how to organize your music better than we do. It lets you make playlists based on regular expressions (don’t worry, regular searches work too). It lets you display and edit any tags you want in the file, for all the file formats it supports.

Unlike some, Quod Libet will scale to libraries with tens of thousands of songs. It also supports most of the features you’d expect from a modern media player: Unicode support, advanced tag editing, ReplayGain, podcasts & Internet radio, album art support and all major audio formats – see the screenshots.

Ex Falso is a program that uses the same tag editing backend as Quod Libet, but isn’t connected to an audio player. If you’re perfectly happy with your favorite player and just want something that can handle tagging, Ex Falso is for you.

Quod Libet

Website
Download
Features
Guide
Screenshots
Quod Libet Companion Plugins

Audio RightMark ~ Independent Audio Benchmarking


Need help deciding which PC audio hardware to purchase? Want to test some gear? Open source, freeware hardware analysis software and posted RMAA test results for common hardware.

Website
Download
Test Results

RareWares ~ Freeware Audio Archive


Providing hard-to-find pieces of software since 2001

Repository of open audio CODECs, compiled LAME binaries and freeware utilities.

http://rarewares.org

Mp3tag ~ Universal Tag Editor


Mp3tag is a powerful and easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of audio files.

It supports batch tag-editing of ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags for multiple files at once covering a variety of audio formats.

Furthermore, it supports online database lookups from, e.g., Discogs, MusicBrainz or freedb, allowing you to automatically gather proper tags and download cover art for your music library.

You can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words in tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more.

mp3tag-en

www.mp3tag.de
www.mp3tag.de/en/screenshots
community.mp3tag.de
twitter.com/mp3tag
hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=122049.0
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3tag
apps.apple.com/us/app/mp3tag/id1532597159
www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/mp3tag/9nn77tcq1nc8
www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1137
musicbrainz.org/doc/Mp3tag

freedb.org ~ Metadata Lookup Service


Sadly, this service was terminated as of March 2020, apparently due to corporate indifference.

freedb was a free CD and music database service to look up textual metadata about music, audio or data CDs. This was done by a client which queried the freedb database. As a result, the client displayed the artist, CD title, track list and some additional information. Clients are for example CD players, CD rippers and CD burning software.

www.freedb.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedb

Alternative CDDB servers:

  • freedb.dbpoweramp.com – defunct link
  • gnudb.org

Resources:

Foobar2000 ~ How To Install A Component


Add-on components greatly extend the appearance and functionality of Foobar2000.

  1. Open the Foobar Preferences dialog (File | Preferences or press CTRL+P)
  2. Go to the Components page  (click components at the top of the list)
  3. Click the “Install…” button and select the component archive (zip) file, or drag the component’s file to the Installed components list box.
  4. Press “OK“, you will be prompted to restart foobar2000 in order to load the newly installed component.
  5. If the component has a visual element, you’ll need to add the component to the DUI (Default User Interface) now. Toggle View\Layout\Enable Layout Editing Mode and then add a new panel or tab. Right click the new panel or tab area and select “Add New UI Element …“, then select the new component from the list. You may need to adjust borders to fit. Exit layout mode.
foobar - preferences - components - install

Foobar2000: How to install a component

Additional Resources:

List Of Foobar Components

New Feature Monitor ~ foo_whatsnew

Convolver ~ A Convolution Plugin


Convolver is an open source, high performance Windows application for applying finite impulse response (FIR) filters to multi-channel digital audio in the form of

Convolver will take a set of FIR filter files (sound files) and convolve them with sound paths mixed from the input channels, mixing the results into a set of specified output channels.

convolver

convolver.sourceforge.net
Download
Documentation

DRC ~ Digital Room Correction Filter Generator


DRC is a program used to generate correction filters for acoustic compensation of HiFi and audio systems in general, including listening room compensation. DRC generates just the FIR correction filters, which can be used with a real time or offline convolver to provide real time or offline correction. DRC doesn’t provide convolution features, and provides only some simplified, although really accurate, measuring tools.

drc-fir.sourceforge.net
sourceforge.net/projects/drc-fir/files/
Documentation
Wikipedia

Foobar2000 ~ DADA Automatic Song Rating


Date and duration adjusted (DADA) auto-rating algorithm for foobar2000

The DADA Auto-Rating algorithm (DAR) automatically rates music according to a variety of statistics collected by foobar2000’s official “playback statistics” plugin.

If done well, an auto-rating algorithm will simply tell you what your favorite (and conversely, least favorite) music is, and the rating will be derived from and reflect actual listening behavior. This is quite different from manual ratings (e.g. 1 – 5 stars set by the user), since there’s very often a disparity between what we’d like ourselves to like, and what we actually like. For those interested in uncovering their actual musical tastes, a good auto-rating formula can be quite illuminating.

Foobar - Ratings and DAR - cropped

www.giantpygmy.net/studio/?post=dada-music-auto-rating-algorithm-foobar2000
Hydrogen Audio Discussion