dreamshark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamshark) wrote2011-03-06 09:29 pm
dreamshark) wrote2011-03-06 09:29 pm
Entry tags:
Best Free App EVAH!!
(Do we call them "apps" now even if they run on a desktop computer instead of a smartphone? Nobody ever says "program" anymore.)
Ever since I started making themed playlists and CD compilations, the varying sound volumes of my digitized songs have been driving me nuts. The iTunes "sound check" helps a little bit, but nowhere near enough to mask the volume difference between the tracks on an old Joan Baez album and a recently recorded filk collection that sounds like it was recorded in a giant cavern.
So I looked around on the Intertoobs and found this great little utility called MP3Gain." It's not a full-featured DJ program. It just does one thing - adjust a set of MP3 files so they all play back at about the same perceived volume. I read the explanation of how it works, but don't really understand it. Supposedly it fiddles with the internal tags in the MP3 file rather than re-recording the file, which means the process is both lossless and reversible. Or so the website says.
Just to be cautious, I backed up my entire iTunes library before I started. I started out with the Compilations folder in my iTunes directory, which contains (among other things) all the songs I've gotten from other people in CD exchanges. These tend to be wildly different in volume, so a good place to start. It took about an hour (there seem to be more than 1500 files in that directory!) but worked beautifully. All my tags still look good in iTunes, the songs play, and the volume seems much more even.
I'm now converting Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and PP&M, some particularly egregious offenders in the uneven volume department.
Ever since I started making themed playlists and CD compilations, the varying sound volumes of my digitized songs have been driving me nuts. The iTunes "sound check" helps a little bit, but nowhere near enough to mask the volume difference between the tracks on an old Joan Baez album and a recently recorded filk collection that sounds like it was recorded in a giant cavern.
So I looked around on the Intertoobs and found this great little utility called MP3Gain." It's not a full-featured DJ program. It just does one thing - adjust a set of MP3 files so they all play back at about the same perceived volume. I read the explanation of how it works, but don't really understand it. Supposedly it fiddles with the internal tags in the MP3 file rather than re-recording the file, which means the process is both lossless and reversible. Or so the website says.
Just to be cautious, I backed up my entire iTunes library before I started. I started out with the Compilations folder in my iTunes directory, which contains (among other things) all the songs I've gotten from other people in CD exchanges. These tend to be wildly different in volume, so a good place to start. It took about an hour (there seem to be more than 1500 files in that directory!) but worked beautifully. All my tags still look good in iTunes, the songs play, and the volume seems much more even.
I'm now converting Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and PP&M, some particularly egregious offenders in the uneven volume department.