xenial (1) collectiongain.1.gz

NAME

       collectiongain - large scale Replay Gain calculating tool

SYNOPSIS

       collectiongain [options] music_dir
       collectiongain --help
       collectiongain --version

DESCRIPTION

       collectiongain  is  a  script  calculating  the  Replay  Gain values of a large set of music files inside
       music_dir. Files belonging to the same album will be identified using the file tags and album Replay Gain
       data will be calculated for them.

OPTIONS

       --version
              Display the version of the software.

       -h, --help
              Display a short summary of the available options.

       -f, --force
              Recalculate Replay Gain even if the file already contains gain information.

       -d, --dry-run
              Don't actually modify any files.

       -r REF, --reference-loudness=REF
              Set the reference loudness to REF dB (default: 89 dB)

       --mp3-format=MP3_FORMAT
              Choose  the  Replay  Gain data format for MP3 files. The default setting should be compatible with
              most decent software music players, so it is generally not necessary to mess  with  this  setting.
              See below for more information.

       --ignore-cache
              Do not use the file cache at all.

       --regain
              Fully reprocess everything. Same as --force --ignore-cache.

       -j JOBS, --jobs=JOBS
              Run  JOBS jobs simultaneously. Must be >= 1. By default, this is set to the number of CPU cores in
              the system to provide best performance.

MP3 FORMATS

       Proper Replay Gain support for MP3 files is a bit of a mess: on  the  one  hand,  there  is  the  mp3gain
       application  [1]  which  was relatively widely used (I don't know if it still is) -- it directly modifies
       the audio data which has the advantage that it works with pretty much any player, but it also  means  you
       have  to  decide  ahead  of  time  whether you want track gain or album gain. Besides, it's just not very
       elegant. On the other hand, there are at least two  commonly  used  ways  to  store  proper  Replay  Gain
       information in ID3v2 tags [2].

       Now,  in  general  you don't have to worry about this when using this package: by default, replaygain and
       collectiongain will read and write Replay Gain  information  in  the  two  most  commonly  used  formats.
       However,  if  for whatever reason you need more control over the MP3 Replay Gain information, you can use
       the --mp3-format option (supported by both programs) to change the behaviour. Possible choices with  this
       switch are:

          • replaygain.org  (alias: fb2k) Replay Gain information is stored in ID3v2 TXXX frames. This format is
            specified on the replaygain.org website as the recommended  format  for  MP3  files.  Notably,  this
            format is also used by the foobar2000 music player for Windows [3].

          • legacy  (alias:  ql)  Replay  Gain  information  is  stored  in  ID3v2.4 RVA2 frames. This format is
            described as "legacy" by replaygain.org; however, it is still the primary format for  at  least  the
            Quod  Libet  music  player  [4]  and  possibly  others. It should be noted that this format does not
            support volume adjustments of more than 64 dB: if the calculated gain value is smaller than  -64  dB
            or greater than or equal to +64 dB, it is clamped to these limit values.

          • default  This is the default implementation used by both replaygain and collectiongain. When writing
            Replay Gain data, both the replaygain.org as well as the legacy format are written. As for  reading,
            if  a  file  contains data in both formats, both data sets are read and then compared. If they match
            up, that Replay Gain information is returned for the file.  However, if they don't match, no  Replay
            Gain data is returned to signal that this file does not contain valid (read: consistent) Replay Gain
            information.

       [1] http://mp3gain.sourceforce.net

       [2] http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ReplayGain_specification#ID3v2

       [3] http://foobar2000.org

       [4] http://code.google.com/p/quodlibet

SEE ALSO

       replaygain(1)