Flare4War Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Just a quick question for our remixers here or anyone else who may know. What would be the best software in your opinions to use for normalizing a large music collection? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Overflow Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 I use Audacity to normalize my music. iTunes and most ipods also have a sound check feature, which works pretty well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Strader Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Normalizing a music collection? This is about the worst thing I've ever heard on these forums Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flare4War Posted June 9, 2011 Author Share Posted June 9, 2011 Normalizing a music collection? This is about the worst thing I've ever heard on these forums Stop being yourself Brandon. Ok, imagine a massive playlist. What do you think would be the best software for normalizing it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moseph Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Stop being yourself Brandon.Ok, imagine a massive playlist. What do you think would be the best software for normalizing it. If you're doing this with MP3 files, use something that doesn't have to re-encode the file, since you'll lose sound quality if you re-encode. I haven't used it, but MP3Gain looks like a good bet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillRock Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Normalizing a music collection? This is about the worst thing I've ever heard on these forums And thats why you should GO AWAY AND NEVER COME BACK. seriously tho, this is a good question. I tend to use itunes (sound check feature) but that really sucks, I wouldn't recommend it, all it does is quieten everything and stuff still isn't at the same volume If anyone knows of anything better, i'm listening also Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Strader Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 If my music is in your library and you plan to normalize it, I'd prefer you delete it instead Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flare4War Posted June 9, 2011 Author Share Posted June 9, 2011 If my music is in your library and you plan to normalize it, I'd prefer you delete it instead Will you please gtfo and let me see if I can get some recommendations already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Strader Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 You can't normalize a perceived volume, you'll have to do each song individually... Normalizing a library to 0db would just raise the volume up until the highest peak reached 0db. Every song is mastered differently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 When did he say anything about perceived volume? You've made your point Brandon, stop posting the same thing. Consider this a warning. Anyway, it depends on what format your music collection is in. If you're dealing with lossless stuff, you might check out Goldwave. You can do batch processing and normalize everything to the same peak volume. Now, this isn't going to affect perceived volume if everything is already at peak 0dB, but it's a start. For MP3s, check out MP3gain: http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ Although I've heard iTunes does a good job of this too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PriZm Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Do you need to normalize it to access it somewhere else or would realtime normalizing on your PC itself be a reasonable alternative ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vampire Hunter Dan Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 I highly recommend mp3gain, as well. For car/portable listening especially, I despise big jumps in volume from track to track--this basically nondestructively eliminates the problem, as long as the "volume" is kept perhaps 95 and below. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flare4War Posted June 9, 2011 Author Share Posted June 9, 2011 Do you need to normalize it to access it somewhere else or would realtime normalizing on your PC itself be a reasonable alternative ? No, the problem is I listen to mp3's in my car using a USB drive and some songs are too loud and some are too quiet. So I'm always having to fiddle with the volume. I highly recommend mp3gain, as well. For car/portable listening especially, I despise big jumps in volume from track to track--this basically nondestructively eliminates the problem, as long as the "volume" is kept perhaps 95 and below. Sounds like a lot of people are pleased with this mp3Gain. When you say "...kept perhaps 95 and below." what are you referring to specifically? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rozovian Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Semi-on-topic here: If we are talking about adjusting perceived volume, RMS metering could be used for dealing with the differences in perceived volume between stuff that's has clipped peaks and heavy compression, and more dynamic material. Dunno software that does this, but it seems like there's a tag in mp3 files (or just in the iTunes library, idunno) that could be adjusted. Wouldn't be perfect, but unless I'm missing something, it'd be a good way to level things out a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vampire Hunter Dan Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 No, the problem is I listen to mp3's in my car using a USB drive and some songs are too loud and some are too quiet. So I'm always having to fiddle with the volume.Sounds like a lot of people are pleased with this mp3Gain. When you say "...kept perhaps 95 and below." what are you referring to specifically? When you open up mp3gain, the main "option" is to choose the Target "Normal" Volume. I always choose 95, and then apply that to every file I've dragged into it, and I almost never encounter any distorted sound. If it's background music/solo piano, etc, then I'm a bit more careful--somewhere from 90 to 93, depending. Also, I don't really have much chance to look this up to verify at the moment, but if I remember right, RMS/perceived volume *is* what mp3gain adjusts, and it's 100% reversible--I believe it too just edits the tag portion of the mp3s, but the changes always work in Winamp, on car mp3/CD players, etc, at least for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Strader Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Semi-on-topic here:If we are talking about adjusting perceived volume, RMS metering could be used for dealing with the differences in perceived volume between stuff that's has clipped peaks and heavy compression, and more dynamic material. Dunno software that does this, but it seems like there's a tag in mp3 files (or just in the iTunes library, idunno) that could be adjusted. Wouldn't be perfect, but unless I'm missing something, it'd be a good way to level things out a bit. Good points here. -12db is probably a decent RMS range, that's why I aim for with most songs.. I've seen electronica go to like -6db RMS though, really pushing it! Don't iPods and things like that have some kind of auto-leveling with audio? I don't usually have to adjust volumes at all between songs but I have never used a USB stick by itself.. And the USB stick does auto-shuffle with the songs doesn't it? Hmmmm... Someone with more experience in normalizing RMS could help out here methinks For car/portable listening especially, Also good advice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flare4War Posted June 9, 2011 Author Share Posted June 9, 2011 MP3Gain looks nice for what I'm trying to do. My brother and I are going to split the cost on it and get the program, but I'll still be keeping an eye on this thread in case anyone has other recommendations. Thanks for the feedback, guys. And thanks Zircon and Moseph for the link. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flare4War Posted June 18, 2011 Author Share Posted June 18, 2011 Just wanted to bump this and say thanks again. We've been using MP3Gain and it works wonderfully. It's exactly what we was looking for. So anyways, my bro just wanted me to shout out again and say thanks. I should have asked about this a long, long time ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EC2151 Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 I have a semi-related question: some of the Mp3s I download or have had for a long time get this really staticy screechy noise to them that really is murder on the ears. Is this the "loss" that people talk about when they talk about MP3s? I've only ever seen it happen in that format. If there is a way to remove that screechy grating noise, I'd be a heppy heppy "ket". Or is this just me and my computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analoq Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 Older Xing-based mp3 encoders (e.g. blade) produced a compromised high-end which was distinguishably annoying. Perhaps your older mp3s were from one of these encoders. Or maybe they just have very low bit-rate and you're hearing ordinary artifacts. Unfortunately either situation it can't be helped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Briggs Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 man I might have to get this mp3gain thingy because anamanaguchi's older music is mastered so poorly (read: LOUDLY) that it practically blows out my car speakers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moguta Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 MP3Gain looks nice for what I'm trying to do. My brother and I are going to split the cost on it and get the program Nothing breaks the bank like a $0 program, eh? More seriously, been a faithful user of MP3Gain for years now. It works (volumetric) wonders! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KyleJCrb Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 I have a semi-related question:some of the Mp3s I download or have had for a long time get this really staticy screechy noise to them that really is murder on the ears. Is this the "loss" that people talk about when they talk about MP3s? I've only ever seen it happen in that format. If there is a way to remove that screechy grating noise, I'd be a heppy heppy "ket". Or is this just me and my computer? The "loss" found in MP3s and other compressed formats comes from the digital conversion and compression from a large .wav or CD file down to the compressed format. This loss is always constant and is always there, but it shouldn't result in massive static (and it's arguable that there is much of an effect at all on most music, depending on bitrate settings and the like.) I have MP3s that I've been holding onto since at least 2001 and they have no problems. I've never heard of digital files "degrading" over time like that, so this is interesting. Do you have bad hard drives, or were the old MP3s copied from bad hard drives or old, badly-burned CD-Rs? Those are the only causes that I can think of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Strader Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 Don't know if it is relevant, but I have a spindle of CDs that are about 6 years old, and when I tried to burn music to them, they got a loud crunchy static at a consistent area on each disc. Maybe the CDs you ripped had a similar problem, but I don't think something like that'd happen to downloaded mp3s (over time?) unless they were faulty to begin with. o_o Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flare4War Posted June 20, 2011 Author Share Posted June 20, 2011 Nothing breaks the bank like a $0 program, eh? I didn't realize there was a free version when I posted that but that's besides the point. The program is great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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