Has iTunes stopped using the iTunNORM tag?

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Has iTunes stopped using the iTunNORM tag?

Recently, I was trying to figure out whether I wanted to use info generated by the replay_gain algorithm in my iTunNORM tags, so I experimented with a couple of things, and one of things I did was to remove the iTunNORM tag completely from a copy of an aac file. I then added this song to iTunes, I noticed that the file remained unchanged, the iTunNORM tag was not created ( and yes I had the Sound Check feature on)

So then I picked a song that I had, and I generated 3 aac's from it (one where I amplified the volume, one I decreased the volume, and one with the volume unchanged), so there was no iTunNORM tag in the files, no replay_gain tags in the files. I then added these songs to iTunes, and found out that soundcheck now works without adding the itunNORM tag to aac's; that is to say, if I have Sound Check off, then the 3 test acc's will play at different levels of loudness, and if it is on then they sound to be at the same level of loudness.

Has anyone else noticed this behaviour?

Has iTunes stop using the iTunNORM tag?

BTW:

I used foobar and qtaacenc (QuickTime commandline encoder) to create the aac files.

I did this after I had upgraded to iTunes 11, I have since downgraded to 10.7 and I have gotten the same results. I am using the 64 bit windows version of iTunes.

Posted on Dec 6, 2012 9:15 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 10, 2013 2:02 AM in response to area306

Also I'm very very interested in knowing the answer to your question.

I posted yesterday some questions (among which your question itself) here "https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4791322" but nobody answered me yet.

Did you find out at last if iTunes 10 stopped using the iTunNorm tag and where it eventually write soundcheck info into an mp3 file?

Thank you very much for your anser.

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Answer 2

Mar 27, 2013 4:56 PM in response to neversaynever1

I've been experimenting with every combination of ID3v2.3 tag encoding, replaygain album/track setting, comment itunnorm, itunnorm, etc for mp3 files and have zero luck with having the iPhone 4 on iOS 6.0 make any change to the song volume with SoundCheck on.

I'm starting to think I'll just use MP3Gain to change the volume data as that is the only thing that actually works.

I'd love to know exactly what the iPhone Music app is using for the SoundCheck/ReplayGain data.

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Answer 3

Mar 28, 2013 5:15 AM in response to TThibodeau

After many tests using an Hex Editor, I can confirm that iTunes 10 SoundCheck system does'nt write any ID3 tag into the mp3 file.

However iTunes computes a Volume Adjustment. So I think the informations about SounCheck are only into the Music Library.itl. But I never had confirmations about that ...

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