Normalizing Volume Newbie Question
Am waiting for my new iPod to arrive. Have ripped all my albums using EAC/RazorLame. Also have some single files. I've downloaded Ephod and am ready to go with it when the box arrives.
Now my questions: Before loading onto the iPod do I need to go through all the files with something like MP3Gain to normalize the file volume settings? If so, what is the recommended gain setting? Thanks for reading (and, hopefully responding!)
[443 byte] By [
n2ss] at [2007-11-9 12:53:51]
# 1 Re: Normalizing Volume Newbie Question
You don't have to.. but it might help.
I downloaded MP3Gain (the GUI version) and manually did "Album Gain" on all my albums. That helped a lot to get the sound right. Album Gain brings each album louder or quieter to the dB level you want (89 dB) while maintaining the volume differences between songs on that album. So if a song is supposed to be quiet, it stays that way compared to the rest of the album.
Oh, and the GUI version of MP3Gain has an undo feature, in case you don't like the new sound it can put it back to normal.
Otto at 2007-11-15 17:06:14 >
# 2 Re: Normalizing Volume Newbie Question
Sorry - relatively new to all this. Where do i get MP3gain? Can I use it to batch process a series of tracks that I then burn onto CD (CD format not mp3). Also - what software (cheap and cheerful) would you recommend for enhancing tracks (eg: increasing midrange). I am a Mac user on System 9.6 though soon on the way to OSX. thanks
Clive
# 4 Re: Normalizing Volume Newbie Question
Yes, Ephpod's normalize does use Mp3Gain, but it does it only on a per song/track basis. Album gain is preferable if you have whole albums, IMO.
MP3Gain can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/mp3gain/
MP3Gain explanation:
MP3Gain will adjust the volume level of an MP3 without loss of sound quality (since it's not decoding and then reencoding the MP3). It uses the ReplayGain method to analyse the sound volume and then adjusts the frame headers of the MP3 file to increase or decrease the gain, in 1.5 dB increments.
Because it actually modifies the MP3 itself, the resulting file is "normalized" in any player whatsoever. So yes, you can process a bunch of tracks and then burn them to an audio CD and have "normalized" volume just fine. It's not actually "normalized" in that sense, it's ReplayGain'ed, really, but that's close enough for most people to understand it.
Another (somewhat undocumented) feature the GUI has which I liked is the ability to batch process a lot of albums. Just load up all the albums into the program then tell it to do album gain. It'll figure out which are albums by, presumably, the directory structure. Worked fine for me anyway.
It ain't fast. Took me 18 hours to adjust 3000+ songs. No big deal though. If you have trouble with some songs (I did) read the help, it can misdetect sometimes. It also can be useful to find troubled MP3 files that required me to fix them further and in one case rerip the album (files were corrupted somehow and wouldn't play in WMP or iPod, but would in WinAmp... wacky).
For any other type of sound modification, like enhancing midrange, you're going to have to decode, modify, and reencode the MP3, and this will give a loss in sound quality. Best to start from source material if you want to modify sound that way.
Otto at 2007-11-15 17:09:13 >
# 5 Re: Normalizing Volume Newbie Question
Lots of great info in the replies and I appreciate the education. Still not sure though of what I need to do. Should I just let Ephpod handle the volume normalizing? If not and I use MP3 Gain, what's a good level? I find that the albums that I have ripped that I have analyzed seem to average about 96db vs MP3 Gain's default setting of 89db. The 96db quality, by the way, sounds fine on my PC. Thanks for the help.
n2ss at 2007-11-15 17:10:13 >
