dBpoweramp Rip Settings
DaveHo
Posts: 3,534
I'm just starting to get my feet wet with converting my physical media. Currently, I'm giving the trial version of dBpoweramp a whirl for converting my CD collection to FLAC.
Compression Level. A search on here dug up some older threads which seemed to indicate that using maximum compression gave the same sonic results as uncompressed FLAC. Is that still the consensus? Some Google searching has turned up threads on other forums where people claim they can hear a difference. The default is 5 & which is what I've been using. Sounds great to me though thus far sample size has been limited.
ReplayGain. I installed the ReplayGain DSP as recommended by the set-up guide. This is the one that does not change the audio, but adds tagging information. Thus far I've left it at the default with both the track & album gain tagging enabled. Is that what I want? Won't having ReplayGain enabled on tracks raise the volume of quiet tracks on album when they are supposed to be quieter than others? Doesn't sound like a good thing. Having album ReplayGain enabled will even out the volume from album to album, right? That does seem like a good thing.
How do I know what players use ReplayGain? Thus far I've listened to the FLAC I've ripped via the Poweramp(unrelated to dBpoweramp) player on my Android device & the USB input on my Denon BD player. I see no ability to control replay gain settings there. Can I assume it doesn't use the replay gain tags? On players that handle ReplayGain, can I disable ReplayGain on playback if I want?
Thanks.
-Dave
Compression Level. A search on here dug up some older threads which seemed to indicate that using maximum compression gave the same sonic results as uncompressed FLAC. Is that still the consensus? Some Google searching has turned up threads on other forums where people claim they can hear a difference. The default is 5 & which is what I've been using. Sounds great to me though thus far sample size has been limited.
ReplayGain. I installed the ReplayGain DSP as recommended by the set-up guide. This is the one that does not change the audio, but adds tagging information. Thus far I've left it at the default with both the track & album gain tagging enabled. Is that what I want? Won't having ReplayGain enabled on tracks raise the volume of quiet tracks on album when they are supposed to be quieter than others? Doesn't sound like a good thing. Having album ReplayGain enabled will even out the volume from album to album, right? That does seem like a good thing.
How do I know what players use ReplayGain? Thus far I've listened to the FLAC I've ripped via the Poweramp(unrelated to dBpoweramp) player on my Android device & the USB input on my Denon BD player. I see no ability to control replay gain settings there. Can I assume it doesn't use the replay gain tags? On players that handle ReplayGain, can I disable ReplayGain on playback if I want?
Thanks.
-Dave
Comments
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I just use the default compression of 5, I've never been able to hear a difference in any of the settings. Max compression will take longer to encode.
You don't want to use any kind of DSP at all on your rips, you just want a clean rip of the actual CD itself. You don't want any volume adjustment from track to track or album to album, that's what the volume knob on the preamp is for. Even if I had a player with the ReplayGain feature I'd never want to use it because it's likely going to use some poor form of digital volume control.
