Tag Archives: ReplayGain

caudec ~ Multiprocess Audio Converter

Posted by tom2tec on

caudec is a command-line utility that transcodes (converts) audio files from one format (codec) to another, among other things.

It leverages multi-core CPUs and runs multiple processes concurrently (one per file and per codec, and more than one thread per codec when it supports it). The objective is to hog the CPU as much and as long as possible. One strategy is to sort input files by size, so that the largest files potentially get more threads towards the end of the job.

Features:

  • Supported input formats / codecs: WAV, AIFF, CAF, FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, ALAC.
  • Supported output formats / codecs: all of the above, as well as LossyWAV / LossyFLAC, MP3, AAC (.m4a), Ogg Vorbis, Opus.
  • Supported platforms: macOS, Linux.
  • Transcoding to several different codecs at once is possible. In that case, decoding of input files is done only once.
  • Metadata is preserved (as much as possible) from one codec to another.
  • Artwork can be embedded into each file, and / or copied to the output directory. It can be done selectively (e.g. embed and / or copy one image for lossless files, and another image for lossy files).
  • Audio can be resampled (e.g. 48kHz to 44.1kHz) and downmixed (e.g. 6 channels to stereo). A profile can be provided to set a maximum value for the number of channels, bit depth and sampling rate. When a profile is provided, the source will only be altered after decoding and before encoding, if some metric of the source is above the given profile.
  • Multiprocess ReplayGain scanner for FLAC, WavPack, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Opus.
  • Ability to hard link lossy files to a different directory when encoding to WavPack Hybrid. The point is to have two libraries that takes the storage of just one, with a lossy collection that has its own root directory and that’s easy to drag and drop to a device such as a smartphone or a Digital Audio Player (DAP).
  • Ability to touch files and album directories using metadata to reflect the music’s release date and duration (see example below).

github.com/gcocatre/caudec

foo_truepeak ~ True Peak Scanner

Posted by tom2tec on

foo_truepeak is a ITU-R BS.1770-5 compliant True Peak scanner. It can also scan ReplayGain, Loudness Range (LRA), Dynamic Range (DR), show the amount of clipping samples and report the position of highest peak.

www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_truepeak

For users primarily concerned with playback quality and simplicity, foo_truepeak can replace foobar2000’s ReplayGain and DR scanners. It uses modern loudness standards, detects true peaks and can write all relevant tags in a single pass. While its ReplayGain and DR values may not exactly match legacy scanners, they are more appropriate for real-world playback on modern systems.

1. Download and install foo_truepeak

  1. Download foo_truepeak.fb2k-component from the official component page.
  2. In foobar2000, open File → Preferences → Components.
  3. Click Install…, select the foo_truepeak.fb2k-component file.
  4. Restart foobar2000 when prompted.

2. Disabling legacy scanners (optional but recommended)

To avoid confusion or duplicate workflows:

  1. Don’t try removing the ReplayGain scanner as it’s built in.
  2. You can uninstall foo_dr_meter and or foo_dynamic_meter.

This keeps foo_truepeak as your single analysis tool.

3. Open foo_truepeak preferences

Go to File → Preferences → Advanced → Tools → True Peak Scanner

4. Ensure the following is enabled

✔ Scan True Peak Values

True peak scanning accounts for inter-sample peaks created during digital-to-analog conversion, ensuring that peak levels reflect what a real DAC actually outputs, not just what is stored in the file.

5. Enable ReplayGain scanning

✔ Scan ReplayGain values

Notes:
  • Gains are derived from EBU R128 loudness, but written as ReplayGain tags.
  • Peaks are true peaks, not simple sample peaks.
  • Playback normalization works normally in foobar2000.

6. Enable Dynamic Range scanning

✔ Scan Dynamic Range (DR) values

Notes:

  • These values are analytical, not official TT DR Meter values.
  • They are suitable for comparison within your library, not for DR Database submissions.

7. Choose tag writing behavior

✔ Use ReplayGain tag fields for peak and gain

8. Run a True Peak scan

  1. Select a track, tracks or albums in a playlist.
  2. Right-click → True Peak Scan.

You can also create custom buttons on the toolbar for Album or Track scans.

Download True Peak Toolbar Button Icons

9. Verify tags at first

After scanning, check the file(s) to ensure tagging happened correctly:

  • Open Properties > ReplayGain
  • Confirm presence of values for:
    • Track Gain
    • Album Gain
    • Total Peak
    • Lowest gain (loudest track)
    • Highest gain (quietist track)

10. Use ReplayGain during playback

  1. Enable ReplayGain in Preferences → Playback → ReplayGain.
  2. Choose your preferred mode, Track or Album.

foobar2000 will now use modern loudness analysis and playback without intersample clipping.

Summary:

  • One scan
  • One pass
  • Peak safe playback
  • Modern loudness normalization

This setup is ideal for users who prioritize listening quality and ease of use over legacy metric compatibility.

References:

www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_truepeak
foobar.hyv.fi/?view=foo_truepeak
wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/Foobar2000:Components/True_Peak_Scanner
hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,125719.0
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplitude
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_normalization
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain

Alternative DSP
www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dsp_replaygain

Foobar2000 ~ The First Steps

Posted by tom2tec on

For most users the latest version of Foobar2000 32-bit is adequate. Users with very large music libraries may need to install the 64-bit version. The latest Foobar2000 installers are available on the official downloads page: www.foobar2000.org/download

After downloading, installing Foobar2000 and starting Foobar2000, you will see the main Default User Interface, commonly referred to as the DUI.

The first step is to populate Foobar2000’s Media Library.

Select Preferences > Media Library > Add...

and navigate to your Music folder. Once Foobar2000 has scanned all the subfolders and files, it will continue to monitor for any additions, deletions or revisions

The next step is to set the ReplayGain values. See ReplayGain ~ Advanced Volume Normalization

Select the Playback submenu:

  1. Change Source mode to ‘by payback order‘
  2. Change Processing to ‘apply gain and prevent clipping according to peak‘
  3. Adjust the ‘Without RG info‘ slider to -8.0 dB

The last initial step is to set your own individual freedb address.

At this point you should see your music and it should play without issue.

This covers the very basics. The next steps will be to add additional components, more configuration and how to use Foobar2000 to accomplish day to day tasks.

References:

Adding Songs To Foobar2000’s Media Library

Zoog ~ Zero Opus Output Gain

Posted by tom2tec on

Zoog is a Rust library that consists of functionality that can be used to determine the loudness of an Ogg Opus file and also to rewrite that file with new internal gain information as well as loudness-related comment tags. It also has functionality for purely manipulating comment tags of both Ogg Opus and Ogg Vorbis files.

Zoog currently contains two tools, opusgain and zoogcomment. opusgain can be used to:

  • set the output gain value located in the Opus binary header inside Opus files so that the file plays at the loudness of the original encoded audio, or of that consistent with the ReplayGain or EBU R 128 standards.
  • write the Opus comment tags used by some music players to decide what volume to play an Opus-encoded audio file at.

It is intended to solve the “Opus plays too quietly” problem.

github.com/FrancisRussell/Zoog
hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,120387.0

Burrrn ~ Burn Audio CDs The Easy Way!

Posted by tom2tec on

Burrrn is a little tool for creating audio CDs with CD-Text from various audio files. Supported formats are: wav, mp3, mpc, ogg, aac, mp4, ape, flac, ofr, wv, tta, m3u, pls and fpl playlists and cue sheets. You can also burn EAC’s noncompliant image + cue sheets! Burrrn can read all types of tags from all these formats (including ape tags in mp3). Burrrn uses cdrdao.exe for burning.

www.burrrn.net

Fooyin ~ Linux Audio Player

Posted by tom2tec on

Fooyin is a customisable music player for Linux. Fooyin features a layout editing mode in which the entire user interface can be customised, starting from a blank state or a default layout. FooScript takes this further by extending the customisation to individual widgets themselves.

Features:

  • Playback FLAC, MP3, MP4, Vorbis, Opus, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Monkey’s Audio
  •  Playback popular VGM and tracker module formats
  •  Gapless playback
  •  Add and play files from within compressed archives
  •  Audio output and device configuration
  •  CUE sheet support (including embedded)
  •  Fully customisable layout, starting from a blank window
  •  Customisable keyboard shortcuts
  •  Filter library on any field(s)
  •  Create and manage playlists
  •  Import/export playlists (M3U/M3U8)
  •  Extensible using a plugin system
  •  Tag editing
  •  Library tree, including directory structure view
  •  Directory browser
  •  Waveform seekbar
  •  MPRIS support
  •  ReplayGain support
  •  Scrobbling

www.fooyin.org
github.com/ludouzi/fooyin

metamp3 ~ mp3 Command Line Utility

Posted by tom2tec on

I wrote this because I wanted a command line tool that could
add album art to (and save from) mp3 files, compute replaygain
and save them as ID3 tags (readable by Winamp, etc).

Features:

  • Write (all) Text, URL and Picture frame tags, with description.
  • Compute replay-gain values and set them as ID3v2.3 tags.
  • Apply and Undo volume gain (as mp3gain).
  • Extract pictures from mp3 files.
  • Inspect ID3 v1.1, v2.3, and v2.4 tags.
  • Inspect detailed info on mp3 files, including lametag data.

hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,49751.0
www.flumps.org/mp3z/tagging/metamp3.exe

Muine ~ Gnome Music Player

Posted by tom2tec on

Muine is an innovative music player, featuring a simple, intuitive interface. It is designed to allow users to easily construct a playlist from albums and/or single songs. Its goal is to be simply a music player, not to become a robust music management application. This doesn’t mean Muine has no features! Some feature highlights:

  • Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, AAC and MP3 music playback support
  • Automatic album cover fetching via MusicBrainz and Amazon
  • Support for embedded album images in ID3v2 tags
  • ReplayGain support
  • Support for multiple artist and performer tags per song
  • Plugin support
  • Translations into many languages

Muine is targeted at the GNOME desktop and uses GTK+ for the interface. Most of the code is written in C#, with some additions/bindings/glue in plain C. Muine was originally written by Jorn Baayen, but now maintained mostly by others.

github.com/mickeyr/Muine
gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/muine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muine
manpages.org/muine

wavegain ~ Replaygain For Wave Files

Posted by tom2tec on

WaveGain is an application of the ReplayGain algorithms to standard PCM wave files. Calculated gain adjustments are applied directly to the audio data, instead of just writing metadata as traditionally done for other formats like MP3, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. The replaygain values can also be added as metadata in a custom RIFF chunk named ‘gain’. This could theoretically allow WAV files to have same lossless functionality as other formats where audio data is not altered. But since no current players are aware of this “standard”, the metadata is used only by WaveGain for the “–undo-gain” feature, which is lossy.

github.com/MestreLion/wavegain

FiiO Music App ~ Hi Rez Audio For Android & iPhones

Posted by tom2tec on

FiiO Music App is designed to maximize the experience of music lovers. Download the FiiO Music app today to start your journey to rediscover your music!

www.fiio.com/app

Aural Player ~ Winamp For Macs

Posted by tom2tec on

Aural Player is an audio player for macOS. Inspired by the classic Winamp player for Windows, it is designed to be to-the-point, easy to use, and customizable, with support for a wide variety of popular audio formats and some sound tuning capabilities for audio enthusiasts.

github.com/maculateConception/aural-player

FFmpeg ~ Open Source Audio Video Toolset

Posted by tom2tec on

A complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. It supports the most obscure ancient formats up to the cutting edge. No matter if they were designed by some standards committee, the community or a corporation. It is also highly portable: FFmpeg compiles, runs, and passes our testing infrastructure FATE across Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, the BSDs, Solaris, etc. under a wide variety of build environments, machine architectures, and configurations.

ffmpeg.org

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