Doing some from CDex, EAC, and Razorlame, the volume always seems to
increase from a WAV file that is max'ed but no clipping shows in SoundForge.
Once ripped, the Mp3's all seem to clip and increase in volume when checked
in SoundForge 7.

What I've been doing is reducing the volume of the WAV to around -1.03db
(sometimes another -0.9db a few times more) in S.F. and then ripping to Mp3
it using S.F. So far clipping is gone doing it that way but using the other
software mentioned above that depend on LAME 3.96 seem to increase volume
until clipping occurs. Decreasing their volume just brings the flat-tops
(clips) down but now the Mp3 are distorted as well.

It's a pain to manually decrease volume of the WAV and rip each separately
in S.F. Any other better (i.e. faster) way to avoid "Increased volume and
clipping" of ripped files?

B~

"B. Peg" wrote in message
news
Doing some from CDex, EAC, and Razorlame, the volume always seems to
increase from a WAV file that is max'ed but no clipping shows in
SoundForge.
Once ripped, the Mp3's all seem to clip and increase in volume when
checked


Lossy coding and decoding involves a pass through two pretty large banks of
filters. All filters ring which is what's causing the clipping. The same
thing happens with the filters used for sample rate conversion.

Digital audio is only robust when you are cloning a file. The minute you are
doing any kind of signal processing, you've stepped right back into the
world of needing to get your settings right exactly as with analog audio.

--
Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
615.385.8051 http://www.hyperback.com

In article ,
says...


Doing some from CDex, EAC, and Razorlame, the volume always seems to
increase from a WAV file that is max'ed but no clipping shows in SoundForge.
Once ripped, the Mp3's all seem to clip and increase in volume when checked
in SoundForge 7.

What I've been doing is reducing the volume of the WAV to around -1.03db
(sometimes another -0.9db a few times more) in S.F. and then ripping to Mp3
it using S.F. So far clipping is gone doing it that way but using the other
software mentioned above that depend on LAME 3.96 seem to increase volume
until clipping occurs. Decreasing their volume just brings the flat-tops
(clips) down but now the Mp3 are distorted as well.

It's a pain to manually decrease volume of the WAV and rip each separately
in S.F. Any other better (i.e. faster) way to avoid "Increased volume and
clipping" of ripped files?

The filter banks used in MP3 are, IIRC, phase and amplitude complementary, so
ringing does not really enter into the picture. However, the lossy encoding
process adds a LOT of quantization noise to the individual frequency bands. I
believe that this added noise is what increases the peak levels. (It should
not increase perceived loudness, just peak levels.)

Note that if the psychoacoustic model is working correctly, you won't hear the
added noise because it is added in places where it will be masked by the
original program material. At lower bit rates, this assumption starts to break
down and the noise starts to become unmasked because the noise-to-mask ratio
starts to become positive in certain frequency bands. The lower the bit rate,
the more the peak level will increase, for exactly the same reason--lower bit
rates mean more added quantization noise.

There is no real solution for this problem other than to allow some headroom
before the encode process.

B. Peg wrote:
Doing some from CDex, EAC, and Razorlame, the volume always seems to
increase from a WAV file that is max'ed but no clipping shows in SoundForge.
Once ripped, the Mp3's all seem to clip and increase in volume when checked
in SoundForge 7.

What I've been doing is reducing the volume of the WAV to around -1.03db
(sometimes another -0.9db a few times more) in S.F. and then ripping to Mp3
it using S.F. So far clipping is gone doing it that way but using the other
software mentioned above that depend on LAME 3.96 seem to increase volume
until clipping occurs.

I don't have a real solution to your problem, but I would like to
point out that the LAME encoder has an option to decrease the
volume before encoding. If you specify "--scale 0.795", it will
multiply every sample by 0.795 before encoding but after conversion
to floating point, i.e. it will reduce the volume by 1 dB. So that
might be a way to get the results you desire without having to
adjust the volume in a separate step.

And since it happens after conversion to floating point, it should
result in not as much damage to the signal (unless you're doing
that 1 dB adjustment on a 24-bit file or a file with a higher
sampling rate before you convert to 16-bit).

- Logan