Is Replay Gain embeded in synced file tags broken?

[Mpegger]

When syncing files to my portable devices, no matter what method I use with MM5, it never completely/correctly keeps the Replay Gain information within the tags.

I just tried syncing 1100 files and the Replay Gain information in the tags was only kept in about 1/4 of the files, even though ALL files have the Replay Gain embeded in the tags. These are not files being re-encoded on sync, this is just a straight copy to the destination sync. It's almost as if MM5 is stripping the Replay Gain information from the files, which I verified both on the portable device it was being synced to, as well as checking the files in Foobar2000. Re-encoding on sync also always removes the Replay Gain so using volume leveling is a must, though it still doesn't save any Replay Gain information to the exported/synced file tag.

In order for the music to export with proper volume leveling, I either have to re-encode everything with volume leveling enabled, or, after exporting the files, use Foobar2000 to analyse and embed the Replay Gain in the exported/synced files. And right now, that's what I have to do; use MM5 to tag and build a list of music to sync, run the sync to a local folder, run Foobar2000 to analyse/reapply the Replay Gain information, THEN finally sync the files to my devices. It's the only way I've found to have everything with a Replay Gain embeded tag and/or proper volume leveling.

Is Replay Gain just broken in MM5? There are some other threads out there that ask the same question for some months yet never seen to get any resolution.

[Peke]

Hi,
I just tested on 3k of MP3 files and every single one have correct replay gain in both MMA and MM5.

You can use https://mh-nexus.de/ HEX editor to brute force compare file on device and original file in MM5.

You should easily locate gain index with it.

[Mpegger]

Hi,
I just tested on 3k of MP3 files and every single one have correct replay gain in both MMA and MM5.

You can use https://mh-nexus.de/ HEX editor to brute force compare file on device and original file in MM5.

You should easily locate gain index with it.

I use Poweramp on my phone/tablets and it can read and display all embedded tag information so I can see when there is or isn't a Replay Gain setting on a file. I can also see when files are missing RG information in Foobar2000 when I check on the exported/synced files. The file sync software I use can also do byte comparisons, but that would be pointless since the previous two programs I mentioned can already show that RG information is missing.

The problem for me of missing RG information only seems to occur on exported/synced files. Local files in MM don't have a problem with RG information. I even used Foobar2000 to removed all RG information on every file and MM detected that none of my files had RG information. I even re-analyzed and embedded RG information using Foobar2000 and again, MM detected that all files now had RG information (strangely, MM tried to re-analyze some files again so I had to disable automatic analyse, probably due to missing album RG information). It's only when exporting/syncing that MM fails on a large number of files with RG information for the files.

PS: In the middle of typing this out, I was trying to think of reasons why MM would change a tag when exporting when it's not re-encoding, and I realized that I have alot of files with multiple artist/genre/cover art embedded in the tags, and have MM set to only use the first artist, first genre, etc, when exporting. Could it be that when MM exports the files and changes the tags, that is when it's stripping the RG information even when it shouldn't?

[Peke]

Hi,
I retried to replicate and unfortunately using MM5.0.4.2690 I could not replicate.
I tried to set things exactly like you said (See pic below) to sync only first artist and no conversion (I also tried conversion from MP3 -> MP3, MP3 -> FLAC, FLAC -> MP3) and replay gain info is preserved (See example where Left is original, Right is synced file). Same is in MMA original (Copied to device manually using file explorer) and synced one shows same info and replay gain.



Here is also tag info in MM also showing Replay gain info is preserved (Top original, bottom synced one).





I would really like to to bottom of this. Am I missing something in your steps to replicate?