@marty230498
Strictly speaking, Strawberry does not have the ability to apply ReplayGain. It can READ ReplayGain that has been applied by other software, but it does not include a built in scanner.

That said, there is a new feature in Strawberry, just introduced, called EBU R 128 normalization. This normalizes the volume of tracks, but only within Strawberry. It doesn't create tags in the files' metadata, so it might not work if you need to play the files in another music player.

If you only use Strawberry, you're fine. Just check "Perform song EBU R 128 analysis" in the Collection settings, and then rescan your library. Then enable "EBU R 128 Loudness Normalization" in the Backend settings. Not sure, but I think it might only work on songs actually in your collection; not songs elsewhere on your computer.

I haven't tested this option yet. All my songs are already using ReplayGain (applied by MusicBee when my collection was on Windows).

Now if you want to actually apply ReplayGain to the songs, you will need to use other software. On Windows, free music apps like MusicBee and Foobar have the ability.

I am currently searching for a Linux based software to do this, but I haven't settled on anything yet. Currently testing DeaDBeeF (previously played around with soundKonverter) but I need more information before I decide.

In my opinion, the software one uses to apply ReplayGain should implement it by first scanning, and then writing the analysis data to tags. There are some programs (e.g., mp3gain) that actually change the song files. It may be reversible, but I don't like the idea of changing the actual file. ReplayGain tags just travel along with the files, and do nothing until they are called upon by the player to provide the info needed. The original file remains untouched.

There is far too much information about this topic to get into in this discussion, and, to be honest, I am still learning myself. But I hope this points you in the right direction.

Sounds like you are looking for something like Apple iTunes album view, where you click the album cover and it displays the songs. MusicBee on Windows can also be configured that way.

While perhaps not as elegant, in Strawberry you can select in Tools > Settings > Behavior > "Double clicking a song will..." > "Replace the playlist" (or "Append" or whatever you choose).

I have a saved playlist called "Play from Collection" that I leave blank for just such a purpose.

That way, if I want to focus on one album, I select that playlist, double click the album name in the Collection, and all the songs from that album display in the playlist. You can set Strawberry to simply add the songs or begin playing them immediately. When you're done listening, just delete the songs from the playlist.

The search function works well for Collection or for a selected playlist, and you can select your preferred grouping from the little gear icon in the toolbar.

You could also make a saved playlist just for your "Recently Added" Albums.

It took me awhile to get used to a playlist oriented player, but now I almost prefer it. Although I do miss scrolling through a grid of beautiful album covers, as in iTunes or MusicBee!

The settings is your friend. I have discovered enough configurability there to make it work for me. I use Strawberry on Linux, by the way.

Cheers

I use the "Qt5 Configuration Tool", which I think you can install in Debian, to adjust the font size and collection folder icon theme. Perhaps that's something you could try.

I am using Linux Mint and the tool works well for tweaking non-GTK apps.

@jonas
My curiosity got the best of me, so I installed Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy" (x86_64) from the Strawberry website. Sure enough, all the settings for EBU R128 were properly displayed. I experimented with applying the feature to a small test library.

I then opened the songs in the Kid3-qt tag editor, where I observed that no EBU R128 tags were written. My main library has ReplayGain tags (from MusicBee) and iTunNORM tags (from iTunes), so I was expecting some new tag to appear for EBU R128.

I then opened the strawberry.db database and observed that the EBU R128 info was recorded there.

Does this mean that the normalization will only work within Strawberry? It would seem so.

I don't know enough about EBU R128 to know if there is a tagging standard for that type of normalization. Is there? And if so, are there any plans to incorporate those tags into Strawberry?

Strawberry 1.0.20, just released, has support for EBU R128 volume normalization. How is this executed? I can find no menu items for something like "analyze tracks" or "normalize" tracks. Is it implemented "on-the-fly" somehow, without writing tags?

My collection started out on Apple iTunes, using their iTunNORM tags. Later, I used MusicBee on Windows and applied its ReplayGain tags (which, apparently, used the EBU R128 standard, but at -18 LUFS instead of -23 LUFS). Those tags are written to the files as "replaygain_track_gain" and "replaygain_album_gain".

I have been using Strawberry's "Use Replay Gain metadata...", selected in settings.

I was hoping this new feature would allow Strawberry to apply EBU R128 normalization so I wouldn't have to use other software to do it.

I am on Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon, using Strawberry 1.0.20, with Qt version 6.2.4.

Can someone please advise -- explain how to use the new EBU R128 feature?

I agree with the rsgain recommendation. In my search for a ReplayGain utility, I had tried MusicBrainz Picard (flatpak), which uses rsgain as its backend for ReplayGain. I found Picard to be somewhat cumbersome, though. I just wanted a simple utility.

Unfortunately, Linux Mint 21.3 (my distro) does not meet the dependencies for the current version of rsgain's deb package. I would need to compile it from source.

Being relatively new to Linux, and not trained in computing, I had hoped for a GUI application (rsgain is command line only), but I've been dipping my toe into the command line more and more, so I waded in a little further -- and with rsgain's excellent instructions, I was able to successfully compile and install the program!

It's a steeper learning curve, to be sure, but once I figured out how to tweak the configuration, I was able to achieve scan results identical to what I had generated using MusicBee or foobar2000.

I think rsgain will be my go-to for volume normalization. Thanks for the recommendation!

@sotos666
Perhaps enable "Monitor the collection for changes" in the settings? I see it is not checked in your screenshot. This is just a guess, though.

I have chosen to go the traditional route of replaygain tags, as that is what I had been using before I started with Strawberry. So I don't have a lot of experience with the EBU R 128 feature.

Just a point of clarification, as was pointed out in a previous post, the EBU R 128 system, as it is applied in Strawberry, does not actually write tags, but rather places the info in the Strawberry database. All the same, the info should be incorporated into the player, as you have stated.

I hope it's as simple as checking the box. Good luck!

I run Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, and I miss being able to use the Qt 5 Settings utility to customize Strawberry. I am aware of the explanation in the wiki, which states that Strawberry uses Qt 6 now, so that Qt 5 configuration is not possible anymore.

However, the wiki states that "Once a Qt 6 release of KDE is ready this won't be a problem anymore." Well, I believe that has finally happened, but I still see no way to set up qt6ct (Qt 6 Configuration Tool) in Linux Mint.

I imagine Qt 6 will eventually find its way into the Mint repositories, but when might this actually happen?

Is there any way at all to get Qt 6 configuration into the current version of Linux Mint -- a flatpak, perhaps? Or do I just have to be patient?

Unfortunately, on Ubuntu 22.04 or Linux Mint 21.3 (based on Ubuntu 22.04), I don't believe it is possible. See this in the Wiki:
Strawberry does not respect Qt style, KDE theme or icons on Linux.

Strawberry is built with Qt6, and needs qt6ct (Qt 6 Settings) installed in order to make changes to the theme (on Ubuntu based distros). The above distros ship with qt5ct (Qt 5 Settings), but that only works on Qt apps that were written with Qt5.

Qt6ct won't build on Ubuntu 22.04 because it lacks some dependencies, so we're out of luck for now. I think the next versions of Ubuntu (and Linux Mint) will have qt6ct in the repository.

I have set up a dedicated laptop just for music, with Linux Mint LMDE6 (based on Debian 12) which has a slightly newer package base, and does, indeed, include qt6ct. It worked well to achieve a dark mode, as well as certain fonts and icons that I desired.

I would love to be proved wrong about this, but I think we're just going to have to be patient -- as long as we are on the LTS versions of Ubuntu and Mint.

If anyone has had success compiling qt6ct on Ubuntu 22.04, please share how you did it!

If you are using Strawberry in Linux I can probably help. You would need to install qt6ct, which is the Qt6 Configuration Tool, if it is not already installed in your system.

With this utility you can choose what themes, icons, fonts, etc., that you wish your Qt applications to follow. Strawberry is built using Qt6.

I use Linux Mint, which uses GTK as its graphical toolkit, so this is what I have to do, and it works very well. The app appears as "Qt6 Settings" in my application menu.

If your Strawberry is installed as a Flatpak, I don't think the above method would work. I use Strawberry installed as a system package.

If you are using Windows or Mac, sorry, I don't have any advice. Good luck!

@silver-sun I wouldn't think you'd need to install anything ALSA related. ALSA is part of the Linux kernel, pretty deeply integrated with the system. I use ALSA to output to my DAC, and I recall a time or two having to restart the system to get everything talking to everything else. So the only thing I can think of here is reboot the system (if you haven't done so already).

Sorry, I can't really interpret the logs, but here's what I would suggest.

In Settings > Backend, try selecting a different output; perhaps ALSA (with the PCM plugin). This way, you could get PulseAudio out the of loop for testing.

Make sure all your GStreamer packages are up to date.

If you are using Ubuntu solely for the purpose of running Strawberry, consider trying another distro (I like Linux Mint) to see if that helps.

I think the general trend in Linux audio these days is headed toward Pipewire, rather than PulseAudio. If you have the option, try that.

I'll confess, I'm kind of "spitballing" here, but hopefully there may be something that points you in the right direction. Good luck!

@DrBrightside Sorry -- that I couldn't tell you. Your pay grade is obviously higher than mine. I have used DB Browser a few times to make simple changes, but you're really in the weeds. I hope the backup database works.

I'm pretty sure the volume slider behavior is hard coded. Is there no point down the chain, i.e., computer master volume, system preamp, powered speaker volume, etc., where you could tweak the volume?

If you are using Linux, the database can be viewed with DB Browser for SQlite, which should be in the repository (It is on Linux Mint.). It's pretty daunting, so edit with caution.

What I would try first is to use the database backup file, 'strawberry.db.bak', found in ~/.local/share/strawberry/strawberry. If that was made before your debacle, you might have a chance of restoring your playlists.

Rename your corrupted db file to strawberry.db_old. Make a copy of the .bak file and rename it to strawberry.db, and give it a go. Good luck.

I'm pretty sure that Strawberry sorts by metadata. A song needs a track number, independent of the file name. The suggestion of renaming files numerically is a good idea. Organizing your album folders alphabetically, by song name, runs counter to the way albums are presented -- which is numerically, by track number.

Right click on a song and select "Edit track information". There should be a number in the "Track" field at the right. Don't change anything yet, until you figure out the root of your problem, but if there is no number, that might be of concern.

Hope that helps.

Some time ago I created a custom icon set, per instructions in the wiki, using .png icons. I would like to create a new set using .svg icons if possible.

It looks like Strawberry can handle .svg icons for some portions of the application, as I select "Use system theme icons" in the "Appearance" settings -- and my system uses Papirus-Dark, which has .svg icons. The sidebar, however, persists in using the original Strawberry icons.

Using the QT configuration tool (qt6ct), I am able to make my Strawberry look pretty nice in Linux Mint, but it won't do anything with the sidebar, and the stock Strawberry icons look so old and dated. Hence, my plans for a full alternative icon set.

So, would I be wasting my time by creating a .svg icon set? And if I can't use .svg, are there any plans to support .svg fully in the future?

I find that the best way to handle this is to use the "Album Artist" tag.

For albums that don't have the exact same artist name for every song, (but are not "Various Artists" compilation albums) put the name of the primary artist there.

Then, in the "Group By" setting, select one of the options that sorts by "Album Artist". It seems that with this configuration, albums that don't have an "Album Artist" entry will still be sorted by "Artist".

While one could use the "Album Artist" tag for all albums, I only use it for exceptions, like the example given in the original post.

Side Note (regarding compilations, aka "Various Artists":

For compilations, while some prefer to use "Various Artists" as the "Album Artist" entry, I prefer to check the "Compilation" checkbox instead, and leave "Album Artist" blank. Strawberry honors that tag, and will create a "Various Artists" heading in the library.

This is a hold-over from my years of experience with iTunes, which uses that "Compilation" tag. This may not be a universal solution, but in Strawberry, at least, it works for me.

A bit of a shot in the dark here, but maybe try switching the ALSA plugin to hw instead of pcm. That's the setting I use with my DAC, but that turns everything over to an "exclusive mode". If hw works, then try switching back to pcm, if that's what you prefer. It couldn't hurt to restart your computer between changes. That's all I've got.

To follow up on my testing, I did not have good results setting Strawberry volume slider to 50 percent, if that, indeed, equates to -3 dB.

70 percent seemed better to my ears. Computer master volume remained at 100 percent. DAC is connected to my computer via USB.

Incidentally, on further reading about this topic, the term(s) used is "intersample peak clipping", or "intersample overs".