In general I'd say it's safe to just not even worry about it unless it's somehow producing noticeable audio distortions. So if your player (like foobar2000) supports Replaygain then just use that instead.Ĭlipping really isn't as evil as people make it out to be unless your doing some heavy modification of the audio or something like that. It's still preferable to just change the metadata though and not have it modify the mp3 values if possible. Mp3gain isn't always lossless although it seems to be rare that it isn't. Isn't it actually safer to just use Replaygain analysis in a program like foobar2000 to handle this sort of stuff? That way there really is no modification of the original file going on other than adding a value to the metadata.

In fact, most of the MP3 music tracks sold from Internet stores like Amazon today will have their volume in 96-99 dB range with clipping reported by MP3Gain in almost every track. You might indeed run into clipping on some Dollar-store pocket MP3 player (you might even run into clipping on poor quality equipment when MP3Gain said everything was OK.) Meanwhile, higher grade equipment might be able to handle your high-gain MP3 file without any issues at all. In reality, all playback equipment is different. However, this is no more than 'educated guess' made y MP3Gain based on the idea of some imaginary theoretical standard playback equipment. The only reason MP3Gain warns about clipping is that it sees that at some points in the track the signal level (at the current gain value) will exceed the formal standard specification. MP3Gain does not even touch the audio data with scissors. (This is the reason any changes made by MP3Gain are always reversible.) For this reason, by itself MP3Gain cannot really introduce any actual physical clipping. It simply changes the gain coefficient stored in MP3 file separately. MP3Gain does not modify the actual audio information stored in MP3 data blocks. Modifications made by MP3Gain are completely lossless. Sorry just noticed the date on this thread, but nevertheless it may help someone.

The guy who wrote this program should have used a different term, using clipping in this context is misleading, due to the algorithm used MP3 gain will never introduce distortion. Try this test if you like, rip an audio CD to 320kbs MP3, drop the results into MP3 Gain and do a track analasis, with the target set at 89db, you will probably see it saying the lot is clipping, then look see what levels the analysis says and set the target to the most common level, now it's not going to process those ones and the clipping thingy has gone. Instantaneous irreversible hearing damage - about 145db

In the case of MP3 gain, which uses an extremely clever algorithm, it simply means that the program has modified the file, either up or down in level.Ī decibel is a ratio, not an actual amount of anything when related to Gain and it's logarithmic, that is the least change the human ear can detect is 3db which is a doubling of power when related to wattage. The term clipping as used here is bad, what MP3 Gain does is NOT what we understand as clipping.Ĭlipping is what an amplifier does when over-driven, beyond the power/voltage available from the power supply, it, as described above, flattens the top and bottom of the waveform, this produces DC spikes which pushes the speaker cones to extremes and produces heat in the speech coil, thereby frying the speakers, this is very common especially with cheaper audio equipment that uses a bad progression on the Volume Control Pot'.

Using mp3gain