# Volume Leveling for MP3 Player



## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

the volume of the songs on my mp3 player are all different volumes, 

what is a good way to do volume leveling for an mp3 player ? 

thanks very much, 

larry


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

MP3Gain (freeware) does a good job. Here's the description:

MP3Gain analyzes and adjusts mp3 files so that they have the same volume. The program does not just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do, but instead attempts statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear. The changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless, there is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

thanks stantley, i will try it, 

but to me, it sounds hard to believe that there is no sound quality loss, especially since the program would be directly, invasively changing the mp3 file, 

sounds great otherwise, i may copy all my mp3 files and then make the changes on the copied files,


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

There really is no sound quality loss with MP3Gain, hard as that is to believe. 

They don't decode/re-encode the MP3 to to the gain adjustment. There is a provision in the MP3 file format to change the gain without loss, and that's how it's done. It's pretty well explained on the site. FWIW, I've been using MP3Gain for years, even sent the author a donation since it was such a good program.


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

thanks JohnWill, very interesting, you mean the mp3 file format actually allows for volume changing ? 

looking forward to using mp3 gain, 

downloaded Audacity today, having trouble using it since it does not support wma format, know anything about this ???

i tried converting wma file to wav and then editing the music file, and then converting it back to wma, but it would always be 5 seconds long and play super, super fast ?????


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## guitar (Jan 15, 2006)

open your wma in wmp and save it as mp3


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

hey JohnWill, coincidence, is this you ??? :

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061119064016AAaYyCz


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

changintimes said:


> downloaded Audacity today, having trouble using it since it does not support wma format, know anything about this ???
> 
> i tried converting wma file to wav and then editing the music file, and then converting it back to wma, but it would always be 5 seconds long and play super, super fast ?????


Audacity only edits wav files so you need to convert the wma file to wav (as you figured out). A good utility for converting between music formats is dBpowerAmp Music Converter (last freeware version). Then go here http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-wma.htm and download the wma codec. If the wma has DRM protection you won't be able to convert it.

Edit the wav file and then convert it back to wma.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Install the Lame_mp3.dll file in your audacity program folder.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3
Then you can edit MP3.

The MP3 playback volume level is just one parameter in the MP3 file.
This is all that needs changed .. not the whole Mp3 file.
That's why MP3gain can work so fast.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

changintimes said:


> hey JohnWill, coincidence, is this you ??? :
> 
> http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061119064016AAaYyCz


Nope, I'm not dumb enough to install WhenUSaveNow.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Note that multiple conversions to/from lossy formats will degrade sound quality. The best option is to work to minimize conversions from/to lossy formats until all the audio processing is done. The one exception happens to be MP3Gain, since it doesn't have to do any conversion to do it's magic.


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

oh thanks, well i did download whenusavenow and don't know how to remove it, 

isn't wma a better format than mp3 ? 

don't want to go the mp3 route for my wma files that i want to burn cds with, 

and i did try wma to wav, then do the edit, and then back again to wma, it did not work with audacity,


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

changintimes said:


> i did try wma to wav, then do the edit, and then back again to wma, it did not work with audacity


How did you convert to wav? When you edited with Audacity did you save your changes and export to wav? When you say 'it did not work' can you give the details.


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

okay, on now, gonna try audacity and make sure i save and then export, i will try it again now, 1:20 new york time, usa, 

will make sure i follow those steps, and i will post back hopefully within fifteen minutes, 

thanks stantley,


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

success ! 

i'll be back, the beatles, 

created a new file that has only the beginning of the song, so it does work, 

my concerns now are that the sound quality suffers from all the converting, i wish there was an editor that could edit directly with wma files, 

also, i need to get the fluttering sounds, a few seconds long in the middle of the song, in a ufo song to go away, or at least squelch them a bit somehow, 

any ideas ???


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Well, to record WMA files to an audio CD, you need to do at least one conversion. If you convert to WAV, which is a lossless format, manipulate them as necessary, and then burn the audio CD from the WAV files, that's as good as it gets.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Try using some of the different filters in Audacity. I use a different wave editor than Audacity, so I'm not sure of it's exact capabilities.


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

i think WMP converts wma files to wav before they are burned to a cd, 

so i guess what i would do is.......... convert UFO - belladonna from wma to wav, import it into audacity, edit the song, save the project, export as wav file, convert back to wma so i can here the song in WMP, 

then when i burn the disk, i will put about 11 wma songs onto the burn list, and put the UFO - belladonna song wav file onto the list as well, and burn from there, 

is this the right idea ?


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

If you're only going to put 11 songs on the CD and you're going to make an audio CD, I would export the wav files from Audacity and then just burn those to CD without converting them back to wma (as JohnWill suggested).

WMP will play wav and wma files so you can also listen to the wav files with WMP.


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

what i did was a fade out and then fade back into the song, the fluttering part was only for a few seconds, i deleted those seconds, 

with the fade out and then fade back in, it sounds okay, 

JohnWill, btw, mp3gain is a fantastic tool, just downloaded it yesterday, so easy to use, fast, does what it is supposed to, fantastic, sounds lossless, 

i used the default 89 dB setting, and almost all of my mp3 files did a negative gain, they were all at about 98 dB, 95 dB, and even 100 dB, is this okay ?


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

mp3gain, 

i can't wait to listen to my mp3 player, songs side by side that one of them was very loud, and the other very low, and now both will be the same volume, 

i must say that one of the things i don't like about using many effects for audio files is that whenever you do anything to change a file, it seems there is much loss, 

like in photos too, anything you do seems to create loss, but that can be okay in a photo since it is like art, but in audio, you usually don't want any losses, 

ofcoarse if you're making your own song, manipulation could be cool, but we want an original song to be as the artist intended it to be,


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

MP3gain sould solve this issue.


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## changintimes (Sep 4, 2004)

yep, mp3gain is great, i'm talking about any other effects, like all the effects within audacity, wouldn't want to use most of them for store bought songs,


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