Replay Gain: what does it do to lossless format playback?

[Analogous]

I saw this setting for Replay Gain on the BluOS app. I tried looking it up online but what I read (briefly) left me confused.
I am mostly streaming Qobuz.
Here is a screenshot of the settings page.
Any suggestions?

 

[prem]

It normalises volume levels between tracks.

 

[Analogous]

It normalises volume levels between tracks.

Thanks Prem. So which of three above settings would be best to “turn on and forget about it” kind?

 

[prem]

I don’t know what smart gain is. But track gain will balance levels between tracks. So all tracks will be at similar db level. This does not mean dynamics or compression is added. It just controls the db levels. It’s like cruise mode when driving. I don’t know how useful it is between tracks but if there are ads it’s very useful. Ads normally play out at a louder volume. I am sure you would have experienced that on TV

 

[prem]

Analogous, it’s an algo which is at work here. It allows about 14-15 db dynamic range. So for western classical it may not be a great idea as it may limit the dynamics. For other genres it should be good enough.

 

[ssf]

I have read somewhere that Normalization is best turned off. It is on in Spotify by default. Off defaults to "As the mixing engineer intended" or such. Setting it to off is one of the recommendations for improving Spotify music quality.

 

[mbhangui]

Analogous, it’s an algo which is at work here. It allows about 14-15 db dynamic range. So for western classical it may not be a great idea as it may limit the dynamics. For other genres it should be good enough.

Indeed. It is best left turned off if you don;t like compressed music. There is algorithm at play here. It does peak normalization which is destructive and you lose bit perfectness. It is useful only when most of your tracks have below normal loudness and few tracks are very loud to be played with the volume control at full/high position. So if you have your volume control at full/high position, the loud tracks will be automatically reduced to prevent clipping. This will be destructive mostly for western classical as that genre has the highest dynamic range.

ReplayGain utilities usually add metadata to the audio files without altering the original audio data. Alternatively, a tool can amplify or attenuate the data itself and save the result to another, gain-adjusted audio file; this is not perfectly reversible in most cases.

Replay Gain was never meant for lossless media. Replay Gain was usefull for lossy formats where you were anyways dealing with lost bits and few more bits getting lost down the way didn't matter.

ReplayGain is a proposed standard published by David Robinson in 2001 to measure and normalize the perceived loudness of audio in computer audio formats such as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. It allows media 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.

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain

 

[Decadent_Spectre]

Replay gain is very useful for a smooth experience, otherwise tracks with different levels can bring you out of the flow. Very useful for music that is loud/aggressive/complex. Also depends on if you prefer smooth or high dynamic range.

 

[Analogous]

Since it’s for Qobuz I will probably turn it off. But first I will do some AB testing to see if I can make out any difference at all.
I rarely listen to western classical music. But I do like dynamic character in music where available
Thanks everyone. Appreciate your help in understanding this for my use

 

[sachinchavan 15865]

I prefer not to auto volume normalise. It allows me to experience the tracks/ albums as close to how they were recorded/mastered. Volume level is another peculiarity of the recording that I ‘like to experience’. But I can understand the preference of some listeners to have more even listening experience. There are some who prefer to listen to low dynamic range music for this reason. I’d imagine they’d also not want volume variations between recordings and would opt for Replay Gain. Also if you are listening in a place where others could be disturbed by the louder volume of a song that plays all of a sudden, you might opt for Replay Gain.

For me, the more the artefacts of the recording, the more varied and enjoyable my music listening session. If a certain track is at really inaudible level, the remote is at hand anyway, why replay gain… esp. if it does peak normalisation as @mbhangui warns!