More iPod help
Posted by Simon Hoyle on 8 July 2008 - 11:25am.
I've got a lot of CDs from the late 80s early 90s when they were mastered a lot quieter than they are now and it means that when something quieter and slower from one of them comes on shuffle, I have to really turn the volume up as high as it will go and even then can’t hear it very well above the background noise.
Within the settings, I can set the iPod to "Normalise volume across all songs" but it picks the quietest level rather than boosting all the quiet songs.
Can you get the iPod to normalise volume, picking the louder level rather than the quieter one ? Or is there some other way of doing it ? Is this where something like the Levelator would help ?
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Volume Logic
The Word's very own Andrew Harrison has always sworn by Volume Logic, which has sadly been discontinued... but if you root around on the web you'll probably be able to find a version that works with your setup.
I use mp3gain
which is a free mp3 normalizer. I set all my mp3's at 95db.
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/
THE SOLUTION USING iTUNES
Select the whole album.
Right click and select Get Info.
On the bottom left hand corner is a volume adjuster.
Increase the volume by X amount (A semi-quiet album only needs a boost of about 5%. Neil Young era CDs need about 10%).
Select OK.
The tracks will now always play at that additional volume. From now on your quiet Neil Young albums will be as loud as your latest purchases.
I do this...
...but it only solves the problem of making a quiet album louder. You still need to hit the volume control because some albums are simply louder in the first place. Still, if it's an adjustment down rather than up then that's progress.
Dynamics?
Then putting the volume up even further (15%?) on that one song should fix the problem?
Or are you trying to even out the volume within the one track? These are dynamics that are there for a reason. I can find extreme dynamics annoying, but I think it's best to just leave them alone.
This article might interest you: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-fo...
It allows you to adjust down as well as up...
...the slider is positioned in a centre position and it's left for louder, right for quieter. Plus, it's a pretty good quality boost (so long as you don't go too extreme). On sensible settings it doesn't seem to intorduce distortion or artefacts - unlike some players like Real or Windows which just pile on the distort.
MP3 Gain...
..is my preferred solution
http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?groupname=mp3gain&filenam...
euPOD
Is my preferred option. This is free but unsupported now. It allows you to get a decent volume out of your iPod. It was originally produced to get round the eu regulations on max volume that Apple stick to...
http://www.softpedia.com/get/IPOD-TOOLS/Multimedia-IPOD-tools/euPOD-Pro....