Volume normalization

matt

I don't know much about how this is supposed to work. I have used it a little bit with other players in the past and found it worked o.k, but I am not a big fan of it.
maybe I'm hearing things but the implementation of this in runeaudio seems unusual.
I can hear the volume changing within a single song being played,its very very obvious at the beginning of the song, I'm sure I can hear the volume decrease and increase, I guess until it thinks it's got it "right". Its less obvious later in the song but I can still notice it.
I thought volume normalization was to keep the levels of different recordings in the same ballpark so as to avoid too loud or too soft volumes when playing songs from different albums/pressings etc. If i have volume normalization on and play a single album it seems as if it wants to try and normalize each song.
So if I am correct in what I am hearing and in my theorizing on the reasons for volume normalization, then the runeaudio implementation is awful (IMHO).
Can it be improved?

ACX

Maybe you need 'replay gain' instead of 'volume normalization':

replaygain <off or album or track or auto>
If specified, mpd will adjust the volume of songs played using ReplayGain tags (see <http://www.replaygain.org/>). Setting this to "album" will adjust volume using the album's ReplayGain tags, while setting it to "track" will adjust it using the track ReplayGain tags. "auto" uses the track ReplayGain tags if random play is activated otherwise the album ReplayGain tags. Currently only FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, and MP3 (through ID3v2 ReplayGain tags, not APEv2) are supported.

replaygain_preamp <-15 to 15>
This is the gain (in dB) applied to songs with ReplayGain tags.

volume_normalization <yes or no>
If yes, mpd will normalize the volume of songs as they play. The default is no.

http://linux.die.net/man/5/mpd.conf