Smart Replay Gain Comment

[w3wilkes]

This item in the Feature request poll should have "Queue" removed from being forced to Track Gain. I, for one, generally load a bunch of selected albums to the Queue for driving in the car and also when using headphones for stuff like walks, yardwork, etc. I would hope that if "Smart Replay Gain" were implemented, the Queue would be treated no differently than category type play (that I never use). 

[andrewilley]

By definition, the Queue is a selection of individual songs that could be sourced from anywhere, with no particular album or any other structure. It's basically just a temporary playlist, so it really ought to use Track Gain like playlists would.

Andre

[w3wilkes]

I guess we will just agree to disagree as in my use case I load the Queue with mostly albums.

[andrewilley]

Again, the key word there is "mostly". Poweramp has no way to know what the source of the songs listed in the Queue or a Playlists might have been, it's just a list of pointers to individual song files.

I guess it might be possible to create some sort of convoluted logic process whereby when playing any given song from the Queue or a Playlist, before applying the Replay Gain choice PA could quickly check the next file and/or previous file in the list, and if it sees the same Album Title and Album Artist tags, use Album Gain mode?

Andre 

[w3wilkes]

On 12/10/2023 at 2:41 AM, andrewilley said:

I guess it might be possible to create some sort of convoluted logic process whereby when playing any given song from the Queue or a Playlist, before applying the Replay Gain choice PA could quickly check the next file and/or previous file in the list, and if it sees the same Album Title and Album Artist tags, use Album Gain mode?

Andre 

Since Album Gain is intended to have multiple albums play at similar volumes without affecting the relative volumes of tracks within an album, I would guess it wouldn't be quite as simplistic as you say. Perhaps Max could look at the open source of SlimServer (Logitech Media Server) to see how they implement "smart gain" that applies the correct gain type based on what's in the Queue.

[andrewilley]

I didn't suggest it would be a simplistic process, I think I said "convoluted".

But we're back to how the temporary Queue works in Poweramp though. In underlying code terms, you never actually add "an album" to the Queue, you instead add a number of individual songs that happen to have been originally sourced from the same album/folder/artist/genre/year etc.

As the Queue (just like a Playlist) is nothing more than a series of pointers to unconnected individual song files, the order of which can be manipulated and manually changed at will, any code that process the contents of the Queue (or a Playlist) cannot make assumptions about there being any implied logical order to the contained songs.

The only way I could see it being possible to make any meaningful test would be to check adjacent songs "on the fly" during playback to see if their tags indicate they are part of the same album. This test would need to be repeated as each new song commences playing though, as it's entirely possible for the user to have edited the order of upcoming songs even while the Queue is already playing.

Andre

[w3wilkes]

My guess is that the determination would be made as a part of the act of adding to the Queue. In addition if any type of shuffle is turned on for the Queue it pretty much mandates track gain. If no type of shuffle is active PA would know if it was an album that was selected to be added to the Queue, If Album set album gain. If another album is added set album gain. If track added set track gain for that track. and so on. I think all this would happen as stuff is added to the Queue rather than while the Queue is playing.

[andrewilley]

6 hours ago, w3wilkes said:

My guess is that the determination would be made as a part of the act of adding to the Queue.

Still wouldn't really help as the Queue (and Playlists) can be edited at will by the user, so there's no guarantee that just because a song was added as part of an album that it is still in that same order. The only way I can see it working the way you want would be if the status was re-evaluated as each new song commences playing in real time.

Andre