Flac - Mar 2009 - FLAC: album replaygain value does not match any track value

Hello !

I ran FLAC over 3 wav tracks from the same CD
generating replaygain info.

Actually, albums gain and peak values do not match
any track values (see run below). The TRACK_PEAK values are
identical for the 3 tracks and, which is weird, we have
one track with a TRACK_GAIN greater than the ALBUM_GAIN
whereas another track has a lower value.

I had expected the album values to be the maximum of those of
the tracks.

By the way, i guess the REPLAY_GAIN_TRACK is the gain required
to reach the REFERENCE_LOUDNESS.

# flac --replay-gain *.wav

# for f in *.flac; do echo "\n$f";  metaflac --export-tags-to= - $f;
done

e512100f_00.flac
REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS=89.0 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-8.58 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.99996948
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN=-8.31 dB
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK=0.99996948

e512100f_01.flac
REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS=89.0 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-8.62 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.99996948
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN=-8.31 dB
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK=0.99996948

e512100f_11.flac
REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS=89.0 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-7.35 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.99996948
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN=-8.31 dB
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK=0.99996948

Hello,

Yesterday, i realized that file sizes obtained from the
pre-defined compression settings (-0 to -8) were rather tight.

For the sake of curiosity, i also tried even lower
"rice partition orders": "-l0 -r1" and even "-l0
-r0".
and i was surprised to realize the file obtained was smaller
than the one obtained with pre-defined setting "-0".

I dont know what's behind "-r0" and even if that value
does make sense (was it really the value used) ?!

Also, i wonder what are the effects of (-b): what are the
pros and cons of raising/lowering the value of 'b' ?
Does this mean that more/less samples are interpolated
by some fixed function ?

Phil