Feature Requests: Track Normalizing, Mono SP Encoding, and Hi-MD Units

[depevauge]

Hello awesome webminidisc folks,

1. Would it be possible to add a Normalize Track(s) to xx dB option in the near future? This would be extremely helpful for making mixed MDs.
2. Are there any plans to support monaural SP encoding?
3. Is there a way to prevent a Hi-MD unit from booting straight into Data Mode? Whenever I use a blank MD in any of my Sony Hi-MD units, webminidisc (at least on macOS) won't recognize the connected recorder. It does however when I wipe a pre-recorded MD or add tracks to it.

Thanks again for this wonderful project!

[asivery]

Hello @depevauge

1. It's probably possible, although I can't tell for sure.
2. NetMD devices don't support mono transfer unfortunately.
3. You probably need to change the 'Disc Mode' setting. I'll let you know if I manage to implement that volume normalization function though.

[depevauge]

You probably need to change the 'Disc Mode' setting […]

I've already tried that, but it sadly doesn't seem to have any effect on how webMD/macOS is booting the disc, at least not in the case of any of my Sony Hi-MD units.

Thanks for looking into adding the normalization feature, I'd really appreciate this feature. 😍

[asivery]

@depevauge Added in https://github.com/asivery/webminidisc/commit/10d2941ed65164968bc4c61d6a6a87d2e5132e6d

[depevauge]

@asivery Thank you so much for adding normalization! I finally had a chance to try it out and play around with it.

As much as I love the fact of having this feature now, I practically don't use it, because it's behaving more like a (heavy) compressor/limiter. Audio normalization would first look through the entire song to find its current peak gain, and with this value as a reference it would then change the entire gain of the entire recording by an equal amount until it matches the desired gain at its loudest section. For example, if the loudest section of a song is at -6 dB, and I want the song to be normalized to -5 dB, +1 dB of gain would be added to the entire song, which would still preserve its dynamic range.

Having almost no understanding of programming I cannot say anything about the actual behavior of the currently used algorithm, but it appears as if the normalization feature in Web MD applies a gain change to each sample/frame individually, which drastically changes the dynamic range of a recording with a high dynamic range (e.g. classical music or Jazz).

For the time being, using ReplayGain is the best option—which is also fantastic to have, by the way.

[asivery]

Thank you for the explanation. I'll try to fix normalization.

[depevauge]

Thanks, and let me know if I can be of any assistance.

[asivery]

@depevauge Actually, it would be great if we could talk via the Minidisc.wiki discord. You know a lot more about this than I do, so it would help me a lot.

[depevauge]

@asivery Just messaged you there. TTYS! :)