I'm trying to adjust my mp3 collection's volume with mp3gain. I'm using album analysis and intend to apply album gain to preserve the variations between tracks in each album while (hopefully) bringing the track levels close enough so I can listen to playlist compilations without having to adjust volume between tracks.

I have run album analysis on my entire collection, and have settled on 88db as the target "normal" volume since that gives me the best tradeoff between maximizing overall volume and minimizing the number of tracks that will clip after adjustment has been applied.

My question is what to do about those tracks that show clipping after album gain has been applied to them. After applying album gain adustment, should I individually lower the track gain for them to the point where they don't clip? That would alter the dynamics within the album some, but would avoid lowering the volume for the entire album below the average of other albums.

Any thoughts or experience you have is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nolo

the question is: do you actually hear a difference with or without a few clipped samples at casual listening?

Digga, thanks for your reply, I am still learning about this stuff. It hadn't occurred to me that if there is was one instance of clipping in the file (a single cymbal crash, for example) that the file would show as clipping in the MP3Gain analysis. Is that correct? If so, I guess it is likely that that single instance wouldn't bother me.

Thanks again.

yes, AFAIK.
MP3Gain can calculate the lowsest volume, where there is no more clipping, so there might or might not be just a few samples that clipp.

I use mp3 gain. I like to an album analysis and I set my target level to 93db. Album gain is good for albums especially if they have lower volume intros or skits etc. and you want to preserve the album volume for listening to the album at full length. However some hip hop downloads, or various artist albums seem to benefit from "track gain" instead. If there are some tracks that still show clipping after an album gain, you can select those files and then do a track gain to lower them. On win XP it seems that doing a track gain will only raise the volume as close to your target volume as to be just shy of clipping (on win 98 it doesn't seem to be as smart). Sometimes you will have to lower the target volume for it to lower below the clipping threshold.

My main goal is to get all my songs at a similar level for playing on the ipod without wild volume variations when shuffling around. Removing clipping is even more of a bonus. I choose to eliminate clipping on all songs. It leaves me with songs that are at similar volumes and no clipping versus songs at various volumes and most clipping.

Why does lame clip a lot of songs ?? I don't know. But MP3gain makes it all better without affecting the quality of the sound.