Good idea or bad idea? I noticed a fair change in volume between some albums… okay it’s not hard to get of my bum and tweak the volume but would enabling ReplayGain help (after doing an album level scan of course)?
And, if a good idea then are these settings correct please? Gleaned from the Asset help guide.
Thanks.
Hi Steve, I set up Replay Gain to try a while ago & spent a few weeks evaluating, flip flopping between, ask a friend, etc.
Setting it up takes quite a time, I let it run away over night, it probably took around 10 hours.
I also found I needed to upscale 16 bit files to 24 bits to give the 18 bit head room required for RG
Bottom line is I prefer it without RG for serious listening. It does what it says on the box, it brings down or raises volume so all albums have a similar level. Loud passages are still loud & quiet is still just as quiet. It works well when playing a mix of PCM pre & post ‘loudness wars’ & with DSD (all DSD have lower volume). But running a few well known favourite tracks I had a feeling that there is a slight softening with top end detail, lightness & presence.
The nice thing with this on Asset UPnP is that its so easy to switch it in & out, so for play lists, mixing up albums for parties etc & whenever I feel like it, its available at the touch of a check box.
So, by upscale to 24 bit you mean the tick box on the ReplayGain screen that says 24bit?
As you say easy to flip on or off to see if it changes things.
Replay Gain makes it not bit-perfect, potentially adversely affecting sound quality.
I would have thought that unless you are playing individual tracks rather than albums, and so maybe having to change volume very frequently it would seem to have little merit. At least if you have remote control over volume, adjusting only upon some changes of album is scarcely much hassle.
Correct …
Thanks for the advice… I’m thinking probably leave well alone but, as mentioned, I can always give it a try. Easy to test these things out with Asset 
This is theoretical, the Asset UPnP applied RG does not change anything in the downloaded/ripped file on the server. The RG process is a software change thats made in the NAS-DAC path during replay.
It does not ‘adversely’ affect SQ. I found it was very subtly a bit softer, nothing much else.
Final point is the as the Asset UPnP RG is an on the fly software process it can be turned off.
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