Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] ogg/mp3 volume

[Andrew Lowe]

On 21/05/2012 2:48 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 20/05/12 12:41, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>> Just for sake of correctness, what the op wants is called normalization,
>> in the world of sound edition.
>
> Actually, no. That's not what he wants. Normalization simply adjusts to
> 0db. How loud something sounds however is not a simple matter of what
> the maximum peak of a waveform is. ReplayGain actually analyzes the
> music to tell how loud it *sounds*, not how loud it actually is.
>
> For example, you can have audio that was normalized (0db) but doesn't
> sound as loud as, say, -5db audio, but which has compressed dynamic range.
>
> Normalization makes audio equally loud for hardware. ReplayGain makes
> audio equally loud for humans. :-)
>
>
>
	Aarrrggghhh, I'm getting confused. More background on my original 
question. I work in a liquor store and the manager insists on playing 
the usual crappy FM radio station, "MORE HITS WHEN YOU WANT THEM AND WE 
HAVE THE BEST VARIETY......blah blah blah". I'm going crazy so I've 
loaded up a memory stick with music from my media machine and using a 
small Android tablet, play the music through the sound system instead of 
the radio. As you can guess this is not audiophile central, a cheap, 
quite old "3 in 1" sound system, one speaker one end of the shop, 
another in the middle of the shop.

	I can't do the turn up/turn down thingy as I might set the level when I 
start, and it may happen to be a quiet song. I then head down the other 
end of the shop, the track finishes and is then followed by a loud 
track, which is most likely excessively loud for a shop. Or conversely I 
start with a loud track, set the level and then it's followed by a quiet 
track and the shop goes quiet.

	I have no intention of applying whatever process to the media machine, 
the tracks on that remain as ripped. I only want to "fiddle" the tracks 
on the memory stick. As this is on an Android tablet, quite a cheap one 
at that, I'm also not sure how whizz bang the media player is so if I 
can get away with the tracks being as "standard" as possible would be 
good - my reading earlier on in this thread leads me to believe 
ReplayGain may not, although I'll prepared to test, be supported.

	So with that background, normalise or ReplayGain?

	Thanks for the discussion and thoughts,

		Andrew