A program similar to MP3gain for oggs?

[Qaz]

Is there one? Or do I have to run MP3gain again to get the MP3s to the same level with oggs. Really wouldn't like to do that...

[Lich]

Yeah, I'm too.

[brian]

Do you have many oggs? Because I've found that if you convert files from any other format to mp3, run mp3Gain on them, then convert them back to their original format, the gain is preserved.

[hedge]

Do you have many oggs? Because I've found that if you convert files from any other format to mp3, run mp3Gain on them, then convert them back to their original format, the gain is preserved.
OH. MY. GOD.
I take it you care nothing for quality? (And i mean NOTHING!)

TransTranscoding = static here we come...

[brian]

I certainly care nothing for gratuitously offensive remarks, which have no place in this forum.

[hedge]

I certainly care nothing for gratuitously offensive remarks, which have no place in this forum.
Sorry wasn't trying to be offensive, just saying that if you transcode from lossy formats repeatedly the resulting file will really be quite bad quality... So there must be better options for gaining an ogg file.

[brian]

Most of my Musepack files have been through several conversions, and they still sound fantastic. I don't see any other option, if a person is keen on using a gain program and mp3Gain is the only one available. But in any case, I take it we're talking about various genres of popular music here, not Beethoven symphonies, so some loss isn't really that crucial; as you imply, lossy = lossy.

[krazyd]

Is there one? Or do I have to run MP3gain again to get the MP3s to the same level with oggs. Really wouldn't like to do that...
Frontah (http://home.vxu.se/mdati00/frontah/) can be used as a frontend to vorbisgain (http://home.vxu.se/mdati00/frontah/manual-download.html). Vorbisgain is Replaygain (http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/) for ogg. The QCD ogg plugin can use replaygain.

Hope this helps...

[Qaz]

Hope this helps...
It does, thanks :) I have couple of questions still, I hope you can help.

I ran the frontah for all my ogg files and to my ear thehy sound equally loud to the MP3s I've run mp3gain before so everything's fine on that front. But I can't help wondering on what basis it set the volume level. On mp3gain there's that 'Target "normal" Volume'. Couldn't anything similar from frontah.

My another thing is about Replay Gain. I found the use replay gain from ogg plug-in settings, but is there a way to set the correction from QCD directly. Based on replay gain's homepage that would be the ideal way to deal with it. Or is that the reason why there reads "No Players support Replay Gain - yet! Will you be the first?"

[krazyd]

That homepage is quite out of date I think, and just provides a bit of info on Replaygain. You can turn on replaygain in QCD in the Config settings of the Ogg input plugin.

I haven't actually tried vorbisgain in frontah, since I don't use Ogg all that much, but I think that the default settings for vorbisgain should be fine in frontah...

[Roj]

Most of my Musepack files have been through several conversions, and they still sound fantastic. I don't see any other option, if a person is keen on using a gain program and mp3Gain is the only one available. But in any case, I take it we're talking about various genres of popular music here, not Beethoven symphonies, so some loss isn't really that crucial; as you imply, lossy = lossy.
Sorry mon, but transcoding is BAD. Period. You WILL lose quality. It doesn't matter if *you* can't hear it, that's just the way it is (some of us actually *can* hear it). And you'll not only lose quality with the first iteration but every iteration thereafter.

Thus, the comment on quality is not at all out of line. I also don't really see anything inherently offensive about the way he presented his information - it wasn't any different from the way I would have responded had I been here (I just got back from two days of being out of town).

Sorry mon, that's just life as we know it. :)

[brian]

roj - as always in life as we know it, it comes down to a question of what practical options are available. There's no value in lambasting someone for working within those options. I like Musepack, which produces better quality sound than mp3 or ogg at 160+kbps (if I didn't care about sound quality, I'd just stick with mp3). But I also want all my music files to play at about the same volume, without having to mess around with replay gain. So what's the positive suggestion as to what I should do, I wonder? Just saying transcoding is bad gets me nowhere fast.

PS. Perhaps there are just too many Godfathers in this forum!

[Roj]

roj - as always in life as we know it, it comes down to a question of what practical options are available. There's no value in lambasting someone for working within those options. I like Musepack, which produces better quality sound than mp3 or ogg at 160+kbps (if I didn't care about sound quality, I'd just stick with mp3). But I also want all my music files to play at about the same volume, without having to mess around with replay gain. So what's the positive suggestion as to what I should do, I wonder? Just saying transcoding is bad gets me nowhere fast.

PS. Perhaps there are just too many Godfathers in this forum!He didn't lambast you. Trust me on that. Neither did I. For a first hand example of that, visit one of the (much) less civil boards out there where 13 year olds of all ages will be more than happy to give you a live demonstation of the true meaning of that word.

There's nothing wrong with saying that an option isn't a good solution, even without suggesting one that might be. Maybe a viable one really isn't available. Not every problem has a way around it - there's such a thing as "you can't get there from here" and sometimes you have to bite the bullet and face that, based on what you're looking for.

As an example, I personally would never entertain a transcoding "solution" because it isn't one - it's a kludge. MP3Gain is not a kludge - no loss of quality occurs when using it. In my case, given my criteria (and obviously those of others also) of maintaining audio quality, that just isn't going to fly for me. YMMV.

BTW, for the record, for quality musepack is as poor a solution as any other lossy compression but posesses the additional strikes against it of 1) being a dead format and thus a dead issue (the author quit a while back) and 2) being without at least the inherent additional portability to hardware devices that other formats such as mp3, ogg, aac, asf or even the much maligned (with justification, I might add) wma posess. If ultimate quality is truly one's goal, that honor falls to lossless - period.

With regard to there being "too many godfathers", there's always "the offer one can't refuse". :)

Ease up, mon - nobody's pushing you.

[brian]

Of course telling someone that transcoding is bad isn't the slightest bit objectionable. What's off beam, in my book, is presuming to know what a complete stranger does or doesn't care about, on the basis of a remark they make in a music player forum. So my recommendation is: let's stick to discussing the merits or otherwise of the software, and maintain radio silence on the merits or otherwise of the forum contributors, about which we know nothing.

[Roj]

Of course telling someone that transcoding is bad isn't the slightest bit objectionable. What's off beam, in my book, is presuming to know what a complete stranger does or doesn't care about, on the basis of a remark they make in a music player forum. So my recommendation is: let's stick to discussing the merits or otherwise of the software, and maintain radio silence on the merits or otherwise of the forum contributors, about which we know nothing.I agree with you. However, you must admit that holding forth a solution known to be less than optimal in terms of sound quality does give the impression that audio quality isn't exactly a priority for the person tendering that solution. I mean, read it from the other side mon - not everyone knows you. :)

That being said, the ether is clear for further transmission. :)

To return to the original subject matter, I'm also looking for such a solution, given that I use ogg and mp3 on my internal servers, mostly for the trade-off in portability that they give me with my personal mp3 player and my car system. My Panasonic SL-MP35 will be replaced with one of the new iRivers that support ogg as soon as they are released either this month or next month (I'm going to go with a 512Mb flash model since a 1Gb flavor will likely be too expensive for my taste). I typically use mp3s at 192 or higher and oggs at Q8.

[hedge]

Hmmm i seem to have caused a bit of a fuss here...
sorry brian if I presumed to know what you believed in, I did go too far with the caps lock on the nothing probably, but really all i was trying to do was say how much loss would be achieved through the use of your solution.
So next time i promise not to take things overboard, ok?

[brian]

That's fine, and thanks very much indeed. As a matter of fact I wasn't `recommending' transcoding as a `solution', just pointing out that it's an available option to preserve gain. But I still don't believe the loss is horrendous if you, say, rip a CD track to mp3, use mp3Gain on it (no loss there, as roj says), then convert it to another format. Of course if you transcoded it sixteen times you'd end up with a dog's breakfast.

[acozz]

If you really want to set the gain and use a format other than mp3, you could rip your albums to wave, use a wave editor to set the volume, then encode it. Not the simplest solution but it'll work.

[Qaz]

rip a CD track to mp3, use mp3Gain on it (no loss there, as roj says), then convert it to another format.
In this case I just don't see the point of converting them to ogg. There's no reason why I couldn't listen them as MP3s. But based on
this thread (http://www.quinnware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73) ogg is better format, so I've started encoding to them.

[krazyd]

In this case I just don't see the point of converting them to ogg. There's no reason why I couldn't listen them as MP3s. But based on
this thread (http://www.quinnware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73) ogg is better format, so I've started encoding to them.
This got me interested in the Ogg vs. Mp3 debate and I managed to dig up this (http://downclimb.com/johnson/articles/bitrates.php) article, which I thought was quite interesting.
I think that I certainly would have a lot of trouble distinguishing q6.5 ogg from a CD. Then again, the same goes for -preset standard. :evolved:

[Roj]

This got me interested in the Ogg vs. Mp3 debate and I managed to dig up this (http://downclimb.com/johnson/articles/bitrates.php) article, which I thought was quite interesting.
I think that I certainly would have a lot of trouble distinguishing q6.5 ogg from a CD. Then again, the same goes for -preset standard. :evolved:It's actually a pretty balanced article because of the following caveats which the author points out:

1) equiment differs
2) ears differ

I personally have no problem picking off the differences between a 192bit mp3 encode and the original cd on my home equipment (note: I didn't say computer equipment - that *is* harder, but not impossible).

It is also worthwhile to note that ogg has a number of inherent advantages over mp3 from just a listening perspective. For me, the number one item on that list is that it was designed from the ground up for seamless gapless playback. No kludges are necessary a la mp3. This comes in really handy on seamless downtempo continuous mixes a la Naked Music or Ministry Of Sound.

[brian]

Wordsmiths' Corner - What's a kludge? From the context, it looks as though it means the same as what I would call a fudge, i.e. a messy compromise!

[Roj]

Wordsmiths' Corner - What's a kludge? From the context, it looks as though it means the same as what I would call a fudge, i.e. a messy compromise!
You'd be right. :)