Hi,

I have some 6000 MP3s that have been MP3gained (radio, 87db) which I use in my car very nicely. I also have FLACs for the same songs to use in my home. The FLACs have no replay gain information. My car MP3s and FLACs for home have identical directory and base names, except for the extensions (of course).

I'm looking for a way to transfer the information stored in my MP3s by the latest MP3Gain, to equivalent vorbis comments in my FLACs. Any automated way to do this (e.g. using tag.exe that ships with FLAC)? If not, I would be willing to write the code to do this, but I need information to tell me how to translate the info stored by MP3Gain to the appropriate vorbis comments in my FLACs. Will greatly appreciate any help!

Thanks!

If you can show me a list of Vorbis comments (the tagging system that FLAC uses) beyond the minimal one, then I'd be happy to point out which one to use.

This is really rhetorical, because I'm 99% sure no such list exists. The Vorbis folks may have a good tagging system, but it's of no use unless someone defines standard tags for them. Especially since developers develop to provided specifications. I'm sure that no mp3 playback software would support gain controls if the ID3v2 folks hadn't specified a tag for it. As such, even if you can find somewhere someone who's defined such a Vorbis comment name, no playback software will support it, as it's not even approaching a standard.

Bitt,

Thanks. I figured out what I have to do, but not how to do it.

My MP3s have APEv2 comment tags (supposedly, but tag&rename cannot see them even though it supports APEv2), that look like:

MP3GAIN_UNDO=+006,+006,N

I need to add a Vorbis comment to my Flacs that looks like:

REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-9.00000 dB

Where the value specified for replaygain is -1.5 times the value specified for MP3GAIN_UNDO. And of course this value is different for every MP3.

My situation looks not good. I really don't want to be dragged into studying APEv2 in order to write the code to do this...

uhh, might take forever, but why dont u use mp3Gain to undo the change so its the original volume, rip to flac with the option set to do the gain comments.

Why rerip to flac? And why try to transfer the information from the MP3s? Why not just use one of the many programs that will calculate ReplayGain values for the FLAC files?

Is there something I'm not getting here?

Thanks for the suggestions. The problem was that I set the gains to achieve a target overal volume of 87db, instead of the default 89 db. All my MP3s, duplicated over three Empegs, a Carputer, and two desktops, were all at 87db. The software I know of for calculating replaygain and adding the corresponding vorbiscomment (flac encoder, or foobar2000) do not have a level option. They will just do it to 89db. I ended up processing the FLACS to 89db, and updating the MP3s from 87db to 89db with MP3Gain. Regarding my carputer and desktops it will be no sweat to transfer the updated MP3s, but when it comes to the Empegs I know its going to take a couple of days each. In the meantime, I'll leave the Empegs with the 87db MP3s until I get some more music.

P.S. The problem with having FLACS at 89db and MP3s at 87db has to do with mixing the two formats in the same player. I don't have space for all FLACS, so I have MP3s and FLACs mixed together (and playing shuffled).