[SOLVED] ReplayGain help

Help and Support Help
#1

Newbie here. I set up Volumio 2.201 on a new Raspberry Pi 3 a week or two ago with a Hifiberry DAC+. Working great; I use it as a DLNA renderer, streaming files from MinimServer on my NAS using Hi-Fi Cast on my Android phone as the control point.

The only thing I can’t figure out is ReplayGain, which I don’t believe is working. In the Volumio playback volume options, I have Mixer Type set to Hardware. But I don’t see a UI for ReplayGain.

I’d be grateful for any tips. I searched this board but wasn’t able to find a solution.

#2

I was chatting with someone who suggested that I need to modify mpd.conf to turn replaygain on. I’m a total newbie to editing configuration files in Linux, much less on a headless machine, but I think I’ve pieced together the steps. Does everything below look correct?

  1. Enable SSH here: ipaddress/dev
  2. Download PuTTY on my Windows machine.
  3. Connect PuTTY to ipaddress with username and password volumio.

I’m told Nano is the best bet for simple text editing. Is it already installed in Volumio?

If so:
4. nano -w /etc/mpd.conf
5. Ctrl + w, type “replaygain”, Enter
6. If the replaygain value is “off,” replace “off” with “auto”. If it is already auto, then mpd.conf is not the problem.

If “replaygain” isn’t in the file, then add "replaygain " to the file.

  1. Ctrl + x to exit, Y to save the file.
  2. Reboot Volumio through the web UI and test.
  3. Disable SSH at ipaddress/dev
#3

That looks ok, but be aware that /etc/mpd.conf will be overwritten if you alter playback options in the UI. Let us know how you get on. I had actually assumed that it was on by default, but I haven’t checked it :slight_smile:

#4

I just went in to check it out and in the mpd.conf I found:

#replaygain “album”

Which, if I’m correct, means that the entire setting is commented out. I removed the # and changed the setting to “auto”. It’s too early in the morning here to properly test it, but I’ll try it later today and report back.

Thanks for the warning about losing the setting if I make any playback changes in the UI. I’d love to see the replaygain setting exposed through the UI one day.

#5

I did a test where I created an album where I left some tracks alone and others I manually set the replaygain track values to ridiculous values so I could be sure what I was hearing was real and not just my ears adjusting, and set it to random play. And, indeed, I’m positive that Volumio is now respecting replaygain values–the tracks with very large negative replaygain numbers played much, much quieter.

I should have done that test before to ensure that replaygain wasn’t working out of the box (it’s always possible that due to background noise and other factors that I was wrong initially and replaygain works without any further Volumio configuration), but at least I know it works now. And I got to learn how to edit Linux configuration files using Nano over SSH, which was kind of fun.

#6

Switching replay gain on/off and setting to “auto”, “album” and “track” really should be covered in the volumio configuration!

#7

any news on an implemantation of replaygain in the volumio UI?

#8

Hi there,
I would also be interested to know when replaygain will become an integral part of the UI?
Errors are constantly cleared up. Every update brings new support for some streaming service. But a very important factor that affects the sound experience for the positive has unfortunately been completely ignored so far.

I have written a small program which every time the PI is restarted the replaygain entry in the MPD. Config writes. However, this is not the best solution either, as it takes too long to start the Pi.

Dear volumio team, you wrote great software and I am very grateful to you for it. But please please, please write this little entry in the UI. There are only two lines:

echo ‘replaygain “auto”’ >> /etc/mpd.conf
echo ‘replaygain_preamp “0”’ >> /etc/mpd.conf

It would be great if you could tell us when and when this could come.

Thanks again for your great work.

best regards
Frank

#9

Hi,
I’m new here, but I notice that these requirements for replay gain in the UI have been completely ignored by the developers for years. Now I wonder why? It is really not a major intervention.

Maybe one of the moderators reads these posts once, and is so nice and would make a statement. I know we can not request that all of our requests for the free product be met immediately.
But you can expect to get an answer to your questions!

So please dear developers, answer this question.

Thanks and best regards
Frank