First, thank you to the developer for creating such an excellent streaming media player.
Due to the loudness war in music, I place great importance on the ReplayGain feature of the player.
However, there seems to be an issue with the ReplayGain implementation logic in Symfonium. When “prefer Album (fallback Track)” is selected, it should not ignore an Album Gain value of 0.0 dB and revert to using Track Gain instead.
Additionally, the options for the ReplayGain feature are overly complicated and could benefit from simplification. It would be better to adopt a configuration style and working logic similar to foobar2000’s ReplayGain implementation. This includes options like none, track, album, and by playback order.
The reasons are as follows:
In music files, the standard ReplayGain tags typically exist in two forms: one with a Track Gain value but no Album Gain value, and the other with both Track Gain and Album Gain values.
If the calculated ReplayGain does not require adjustment, a value of 0.0 dB is still written into the music file. This approach is used by the popular music player foobar2000 and the widely recognized open-source ReplayGain software, rsgain.
In the famous music player foobar2000, if the album mode is selected, it applies Album Gain (including 0.0 dB). If Album Gain is unavailable, it applies Track Gain. In track mode, it applies Track Gain, and if none is available, the file does not use ReplayGain. The “by playback order” option is similar to Symfonium’s “automatic” mode.
Additionally, due to certain unknown reasons, I am unable to use components like Google Play normally. Where can I download an APK file for offline installation? I couldn’t find an official download link.
Perhaps I didn’t explain it clearly before. The ReplayGain options in foobar2000—none, track, album, by playback order—correspond to Symfonium’s Off, Track, Prefer Album (Track fallback), and Automatic, respectively, as indicated by the marked options in the image. I feel that the remaining two options are somewhat unnecessary.
I previously mentioned the standard formats for ReplayGain tags in music files. In my opinion, both music files and players should adhere to these standards. If someone’s music files contain non-standard ReplayGain tags, the solution should be to encourage them to use standardized tags, rather than having the player adapt to such non-standard tags.
I understand that there are two ways to purchase Symfonium: one through Google Play and another through Ko-fi donations. Since I am unable to use Google Play properly, I can only purchase it via the second method. This brings up the question: how can I install Symfonium?
In Symfonium, I selected the “Prefer Album (Track fallback)” option.
I tested ReplayGain using three formats: MP3, AAC, and WMA, with three samples for each format. I scanned and applied ReplayGain tags using rsgain, then modified the ReplayGain tags with foobar2000 v2.24.1 (to make the test results more distinguishable). The three files were as follows: one with an album gain of 0 dB, one with a non-zero album gain, and one without album gain. Normally, the playback volume of these three files should range from loudest to quietest. However, that wasn’t the case.
Additionally, I noticed that WMA files are transcoded to ALAC during playback (regardless of whether Symfonium’s internal decoder is enabled), and ReplayGain does not take effect. Why can’t WMA files be decoded directly? Of course, that’s a separate issue.
In contrast, foobar2000’s Android version handles and plays these scenarios well.
I have uploaded the log file to the specified website and included the message above.
I would like to correct some inaccuracies in my previous statements.
The ReplayGain options in foobar2000—none, track, album, by playback order—correspond to Symfonium’s Off, Prefer Track (Album fallback), Prefer Album (Track fallback), and Automatic, respectively, as indicated by the marked options in the image.
The implementation of foobar2000’s ReplayGain functionality is as follows:
Track mode: Track gain takes precedence (including 0.00 dB). If track gain does not exist, it falls back to album gain, and if neither exists, no gain is applied.
Album mode: Album gain takes precedence (including 0.00 dB). If album gain does not exist, it falls back to track gain, and if neither exists, no gain is applied.