@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!

@paul2berry

I would have to do some experimenting to see how compilations are affected, but I am wondering what type of sound files you are dealing with.

When I was playing around with "original year", I noticed that it did not work with mp4 type files, such as those Apple uses (ALAC as well). FLAC seems to support that tag just fine.

I don't know if this is a Strawberry issue, or something inherent in mp4.

I wish I has something more helpful to add, but I figured I'd at least share the little experience I do have with the "year"/"original year" tags.

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!

A few things to try:

• Create a small test collection somewhere in your home directory, e.g., ~/Music. Point Strawberry to that instead of the SSD, and see if the behavior is the same. That would rule out issues with the external SSD.

• In Strawberry Tools > Settings > Collection, uncheck "Update the collection when Strawberry Starts" and "Monitor the Collection for changes" to see if that has any effect.

• Try uninstalling and reinstalling Strawberry. Perhaps even go as far as deleting ~/.config/strawberry and ~/.local/share/strawberry directories before reinstall.

(That is heavy handed, and you will lose all your settings. No warranty here! Backup first!)

• If you are not averse to flatpaks, there appears to be a flatpak version of Strawberry available. If the regular Ubuntu PPA or .deb package versions don't work, you might try the flatpak.

Disclaimer: That's all I can think of. I'm still on the Linux learning curve myself, so, not an expert by any means. But the above steps would be what I would try.

Good luck.

@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!

@PeterB
Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE 6) seems to do the trick. That version of Linux Mint actually has qt6ct in the software channel, although an older version, 0.7-3. I installed your newer version, 0.9-2, and it seems to work fine for the most part.

Interestingly, it would not allow me to set the font as Ubuntu Regular; instead insisting on Ubuntu Light Italic. It allowed me to use Noto Sans, which is close enough. But any insight on that font issue would be appreciated.

Thanks again for helping me out with this!

@PeterB
Hey, I just checked to see what version of libqt6core6 is included in Debian 12 "Bookworm" and it looks like it's version 6.4.2 (which would satisfy the qt6ct dependency.

I'm going to install Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) on a test machine and see what happens. LMDE (based on Debian 12) at this point is slightly ahead of the Ubuntu 22.04 base for regular Mint.

It's been my plan to set up a dedicated laptop for my music listening room, to stream FLAC and such. LMDE would be fine for that. Fingers crossed!

@PeterB
Thanks for the reply!

Close, but no cigar! The installer wants the dependency, libqt6core6, to be (>=6.3.0), but Linux Mint 21.3 only has libqt6core6 6.2.4.

Maybe Linux Mint 22 will be up to the task. I appreciate the work you're doing, though. I'll bet it's helping out a lot of folks.

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?

I am well down the rabbit hole of ReplayGain, searching for a scanner -- and, also, the most suitable scanning parameters to suit my needs. I know that I prefer tag based volume normalization, as opposed to the EBU R 128 option in Strawberry (no tags), because I use different players on different platforms (Linux, Windows and Apple) and ReplayGain tags work on either Linux or Windows (Apple, unfortunately, has its own proprietary approach.)

All my m4a files, which I use in portable playing environments, have been scanned for ReplayGain in MusicBee. I don't use ReplayGain for critical listening with lossless files.

The question I am wrestling with currently is whether or not to apply clipping protection during the scanning process. MusicBee and foobar2000 (Windows) and DeaDBeeF (Linux) scan ReplayGain without clipping protection, thereby relying on the anti-clipping function of the player to take care of it. The rsgain utility, with which I am very impressed, uses the default of applying clipping protection during the scan, (although that can be easily changed using a configuration profile).

Which approach (during RG scan) would be best for Strawberry?

In Strawberry settings > backend > Audio normalization >ReplayGain there is an option to "Apply compression to prevent clipping".

Is this the same as preventing clipping using peak tags?

The reason I ask is because of the following, from the rsgain README:

*"...not all ReplayGain-compatible players actually implement clipping protection using the peak tags. rsgain has a clipping protection feature that attempts to prevent clipping at scan-time instead of during playback.

...The clipping protection works by adjusting the calculated peak by the calculated gain value (as it would be during playback). If this "new" peak value exceeds the maximum peak (full scale by default), then the gain will be adjusted lower by the excess amount, bringing the "new" peak down to the maximum level."*

If Strawberry uses peak values to prevent clipping during playback, then there should be no problem. If not, I might consider rescanning for ReplayGain using some different parameters.

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!