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Does using Replaygain degrade the digital audiostream?

Posted by Dave in gva (A) on April 5, 2007 at 08:04:03

Hi all, long time no post.

Still on target for my system and have been exploring ins and outs of various ripping/encoding strategies.

Looks like I will be ripping my CD library to FLAC and playback through Foobar2000. One of the things Foobar can do is implement Replaygain, which as I understand it adjusts volume of the digital playback on a per track basis in an effort to 'normalize' playback. The amount of adjustment is calculated in a more sophisticated way than other normalization methods and is stored as a metadata tag in the FLAC file.

While in principle this sounds appealing wouldn't this necessarily mean degrading the audiostream? My understanding of volume control at the level of the PC server is it's something to stay away from in the digital domain. One wants the volume output at 100%, all bits intact etc., straight to a DAC solution and from there volume control in the analog domain.

Am I correct on this? If so, I'll abandon any thinking about making use of this facility in my system. But if there's no downside on the audio quality then count me as interested.

Best,

Dave M

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