My first question is, does the fact that the signal is not hitting the ceiling (despite still beling clippedf) make it less unpleasing to the ear? Please see the image below.
mp3gain claims to re-encode your mp3s in real time meaning that the quality is not reduced as it uses a clever 1.5db step algorithm. This means you can reduce and increase the gain as many times as you wish with no quality reduction. I pondered on this and then thought this to be impossible as if you clip a track whilst increasing the gain, you cannot reconstruct the signal when you bring the gain back down again (since the original file itself is re-encoded)
I was surprised to find (using audacity to study the waveforms that the program was storing the lost information caused by my excessively applied gain and was able to reconstruct my mp3 when i reduced the gain again. Sure the file with the excessive gain sounded terrible and I didn't expect to be able to get back to my original file by decreasing the gain but it did. (there was no copy of the file made by the software)
I have emailed the creator of the software to confirm this and await a reply.
Would like to hear other's thoughts on this.
Apologise in advance (especially to Cara) if the image above does not post correctly. I have had no success as of yet with that particular image hosting site on this board :(
CarolineInspiredMeToDrum