As discussed in this thread, Roon album gain calculation uses maximum gain of all album tracks. This often leads to significant volume differences between albums when using Album mode for volume levelling - especially when some track in album mastered louder than the rest. In such cases standard ReplayGain is more correct - at it uses average loudness of all tracks in album. Please use same approach for album gain - this could improve user experience with Roon and make tagging with ReplayGain unnecessary.
This is not the case.
Roon certainly uses EBU R128 for each track in album, but then it takes maximum number and uses it as album gain. This very easy to check on any album where tracks have different loudness. Please look into original thread - we discussed this in detail.
I have tons of examples in my library. For example original CD of “Blizzard of Ozz”: album gain is -8.6db - it’s just equal to gain of track 7. While the rest of tracks are much lower in volume - track 3 is only -6.7db. But Roon shifts volume of whole album based on album gain - which is simply equal to loudest track gain.
My apologies, I misread your opening statement and missed album.
That said, I don’t find Roon’s implementation offensive to the ear. On the relatively small sample I tested, there wasn’t much between either method, and no grating volume change between say, the original release material and additional (live) tracks.
I suspect Roon’s implementation is intentional since they need to balance features with user experience, and minimize the possibility of clipping when users stack DSP.
Typically, I use REPLAYGAIN tags since it is part of my library onboarding process.
I also use REPLAYGAIN for such albums but this is very annoying - why I cannot use built in calculation, which is supposed to be superior? And REPLAYGAIN never clips, so it could be easy to change built in album gain. That’s all about psychoacoustics - if you start listening album, and it is more quiet than previous - your brain will consider it sounding worse. This devalues whole point of volume leveling in Album mode.