LOUDGAIN(1)

💖 LOUDGAIN 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the loudgain(1) manual — she's a loudness normalizer based on the EBU R128 standard, and she is so good at her job, you're gonna be obsessed. 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

loudgain [OPTIONS] FILES...

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so like, loudgain is a loudness normalizer 💅. she scans your music files and calculates loudness-normalized gain and loudness peak values according to the EBU R128 standard, and if you ask nicely she can also write ReplayGain-compatible metadata. no cap. ✨

here's the tea though: loudgain implements a subset of mp3gain's command-line options, which means it can lowkey be used as a drop-in replacement in some situations. slay. 🫶

and listen — loudgain will not modify the actual audio data. she's not that kind of girl. she just writes ReplayGain tags if you request it, and it's up to the player to interpret them. (heads up: in some players you actually have to enable this feature, so check your settings, bestie. 🙈)

right now, loudgain supports writing tags to these file types:

• FLAC (.flac)
• Ogg (.ogg, .oga, .spx, .opus)
• MP2 (.mp2)
• MP3 (.mp3)
• MP4 (.mp4, .m4a)
• ASF/WMA (.asf, .wma)
• WavPack (.wv)
• APE (.ape)

⚠️ Experimental, use with care: WAV (.wav), AIFF (.aiff, .aif, .snd).

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -h, --help — show this help, bestie. 🥰
• -v, --version — show the version number. ⭐
• -r, --track — calculate track gain only (this is the default, periodt).
• -a, --album — calculate album gain (and track gain too, obviously 💅).
• -c, --clip — ignore clipping warnings. living dangerously, iconic.
• -k, --noclip — lower the track/album gain so we avoid clipping (<= -1 dBTP).
• -K n, --maxtpl=n — avoid clipping; max. true peak level = n dBTP.
• -d n, --pregain=n — apply n dB/LU pre-gain value (-5 for a -23 LUFS target, iykyk).
• -s d, --tagmode=d — delete ReplayGain tags from files. bye bye tags 💀
• -s i, --tagmode=i — write ReplayGain 2.0 tags to files. the deets: ID3v2 for MP2, MP3, WAV and AIFF; Vorbis Comments for FLAC, Ogg, Speex and Opus; iTunes-type metadata for MP4/M4A; WMA tags for ASF/WMA; APEv2 tags for WavPack. ✨
• -s e, --tagmode=e — like -s i, plus extra tags (reference, ranges). extra. extra. 💅
• -s l, --tagmode=l — like -s e, but with LU units instead of dB. 🌈
• -s s, --tagmode=s — don't write ReplayGain tags at all (this is the default).
• -L, --lowercase — force lowercase 'REPLAYGAIN_*' tags (MP2/MP3/MP4/ASF/WMA/WAV/AIFF only). this is non-standard, but sometimes you just need it, fr fr.
• -S, --striptags — strip tag types other than ID3v2 from MP2/MP3 files (i.e. ID3v1, APEv2). and strip tag types other than APEv2 from WavPack/APE files (i.e. ID3v1). clean girl aesthetic 🧚
• -I 3, --id3v2version=3 — write ID3v2.3 tags to MP2/MP3/WAV files.
• -I 4, --id3v2version=4 — write ID3v2.4 tags to MP2/MP3/WAV files (this one's the default).
• -o, --output — database-friendly tab-delimited list output (mp3gain-compatible). 🗂️
• -O, --output-new — database-friendly new format tab-delimited list output. ideal for analysis of files if you redirect it to a CSV file. 👑
• -q, --quiet — don't print scanning status messages. shhh. 🤫

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🎀 RECOMMENDATIONS 🎀

to give you a head start, here are the author's personal recommendations for being (almost) universally compatible. 💖

use loudgain on a »one album per folder« basis; standard RG2 settings but lowercase ReplayGain tags; clipping prevention on; strip obsolete tag types from MP3 and WavPack files; use ID3v2.3 for MP3s; store extended tags:

$ loudgain -a -k -s e *.flac
$ loudgain -a -k -s e *.ogg
$ loudgain -I3 -S -L -a -k -s e *.mp3
$ loudgain -L -a -k -s e *.m4a
$ loudgain -a -k -s e *.opus
$ loudgain -L -a -k -s e *.wma
$ loudgain -I3 -L -a -k -s e *.wav
$ loudgain -I3 -L -a -k -s e *.aiff
$ loudgain -S -a -k -s e *.wv
$ loudgain -S -a -k -s e *.ape

they've been happy with these settings for many years now. your mileage may vary, bestie. 😭

for easy mass-tagging, there's a bash script called rgbpm included with loudgain, which follows the recommendations above. you can make a copy, put that into your personal ~/bin folder and modify it to whatever you need. main character energy tbh. 🦋

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💀 BUGS 💀

loudgain is maintained on GitHub. please report all bugs to the issue tracker at:

https://github.com/Moonbase59/loudgain/issues

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🌈 AUTHORS 🌈

• Matthias C. Hormann mhormann@gmx.de
• Alessandro Ghedini alessandro@ghedini.me

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⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

• Copyright (C) 2019 Matthias C. Hormann mhormann@gmx.de (versions > 0.1)
• Copyright (C) 2014 Alessandro Ghedini alessandro@ghedini.me (v0.1)

this program is released under the 2 clause BSD license. 💜

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and that's the whole page, bestie — this little beauty's been hanging around since September 2019 (that's the date on the footer), and yeah, she's loudgain(1), source and all. go normalize something. slay. 💅✨