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I have been using mp3gain to bring all of my tracks to the same volume level. I then saw that audacity offered a normalization option.

I know that normalization basically brings all tracks to the same peak volume and that if there are louder parts to a track its harder to distinguish Whereas replaygain increases the full track equally.

My question is

Is one better than the other? Should both be used together? If so, in which order?

I started using these solutions because when listening in the car I kept having to adjust the volume from track to track

I'm looking for the best option to make sure that I can select a column level and leave it

PaulMcF87
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  • Replaygain and mp3gain are the same thing with only some minor distinctions. Replaygain *normally* only creates a tag telling the player how to apply gain but can, depending on the implementation, apply that gain to the file data. Mp3gain can be set up to apply that gain to the file and then create a tag so that the program can reverse the modification. They both do nearly the same thing depending on how you set them up. – Mokubai Jul 22 '23 at 22:56
  • You are also mixing up normalisation with dynamic range compression. Replaygain and mp3gain do normalisation as in simply applying an overall boost value equally across the file, neither do dynamic range compression. Dynamic range compression is what you describe as "basically brings all tracks to the same peak volume and that if there are louder parts to a track its harder to distinguish" and is not what either of the "gains" do. – Mokubai Jul 22 '23 at 22:59
  • Whichever you use, it depends on how you are measuring 'loudness'. The new standard is using LUFS rather than dBFS Regular normalisation methods use peak dBFS. You need to find something that can batch process to eg -14 LUFS instead. On the Mac I use Myriad idk of a Win equivalent. – Tetsujin Jul 23 '23 at 06:55
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    @Mokubai I asked the question on my phone. I have changes the title as it came out funny. I know that mp3gain is essentially replaygain and that is what I am using. I was wondering as per the question, what is best to use, normalisation or replaygain and can they be used together, if so in what order – PaulMcF87 Jul 23 '23 at 12:54
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    mp3gain is block-based, replaygain is 'one setting per track [or album]' . Normalisation simply sets the loudest peak to a given value. Of the three, normalisation is the least useful for levelling playback. – Tetsujin Jul 23 '23 at 16:19

1 Answers1

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MP3Gain adds metadata which your player can use to adjust the volume of a track or even track section using the PRO version.

MP3Gain also uses the ReplayGain standard which also specifies album gain to keep intended inter-track dynamics using fields "Peak track amplitude", "Peak album amplitude", "Track replay gain", and "Album replay gain". The target loudness is specified as the loudness of a stereo pink noise signal played back at 89 dB sound pressure level or −14 dB relative to full scale. This is based on SMPTE recommendation RP 200:2002, which specifies a similar method for calibrating playback levels in movie theaters using a reference level 6 dB lower (83 dB SPL, −20 dBFS).

Audacity's loudness normalization (which unlike normalization considers more than peaks) modifies your audio data in the source file. It offers two options, "perceived loudness" (default) and RMS:

  • perceived loudness: the default -23 LUFS (the EBU standard) will produce audio that is approximately 25% of full scale.
  • RMS: This will change the amplitude such that the result has the desired RMS level The default setting is -20dB which will also produce low level audio. Both LUFS and RMS normalization ensures that different audio projects come out at a relatively uniform volume.

Not all players support MP3Gain or even ReplayGain metadata, so normalizing your audio files to a proper standard which doesn't clip or compress it too much is best, after which you should update the loudness metadata tags using your gain tools.

Cees Timmerman
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