I have seen some posts alluding to this topic, but nothing direct, so forgive me if this is a duplicate.

I recently bought a stereo that handles mp3 and wma, and after reading up some, decided to go with mp3. I ripped some tracks using EAC and using the recommended options in the quickstart of -V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" --tg "%m" %s %d .

The sound came out pretty good as far as I can tell, however, the volume level is quite a bit different between those mp3's and the radio (or a regular CD for that matter) in the system. So I was wondering the best method to correct this, or if I need to change some settings or what.

Thanks

You're looking for replaygain - you probably want to rip to flac, calculating track gain and apply it when you transcode to MP3 in Foobar.

Excellent - if I only I had a clue what you just said Actually I've seen all those terms on this board, just not exactly sure what that means - Flac is a lossless format -i rip to that and then what is replaygain and what is foobar? Sorry - I know...newb..

Actually, what Nick.C is telling you about is how to make all of your MP3s similar in volume to one another, not to your radio or CD player.

Do the MP3's play back louder or softer than the other sources? Either way you could adjust your command to modify the volume of every track as you are encoding it. You probably do not want to significantly increase them or you run the risk of clipping.

Foobar is Foobar2000 - an excellent audio player / converter - available free! Replaygain is a calculated value which lets a player (if it is aware of it) increase or decrease the audio level so that the output is more consistent between tracks - like the radio (but on the radio, adverts are louder than *anything else! .

In Foobar, right clicking on a track in the playlist (or multiple tracks) will have, as one of the options, "convert" you would select LAME and make your settings - for advanced settings you may need to include LAME as an custom encoder and point Foobar at the LAME directory, change settings and off you go.

The MP3s all are a lot quieter than other sources i play in the system (radio, cd, dvd) - It seems to SOUND find if I turn up the volume real high, but would prefer not to have that large of a difference between the two...im willing to mess around with it a bit if I need to ...I just want to get it as good as I can before I rip my whole CD collection to mp3.


In another topic, I would like the mp3's to have similar volume to one another as well since i'll probably have a dvd full of mp3's and I'm sure there will be differences between them.

I'd just put the files in this program(mp3 gain) and set them all to the same volume...
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

How would I adjust the command to raise the volume, because thus far every mp3 seems to have much lower volume than the radio ...so I'd like to try this.

If you add the switch --scale to your command line followed by a multiplier (1.0 is no change) then you can make your files louder or softer. Unfortunately your files are too soft, and any increase in loudness before encoding is likely to cause clipping in many files.

Thanks, I had just figured this out and been messing with it, but you are right, even just putting a 2 - even though it sounds good to me, I opened it up in audacity and it looked it there was some clipping going on in parts of the song. I guess there is no way to do a partial number then?

Also, I'm assuming on a large collection, it would still be best for me to set the volume on the tracks all relative to each other as well? And if I do that, do I wait until I have everything I am going to have on the entire dvd?

Thanks guys

No, the --scale switch accepts fractional values. You will often see someone's favorite command line with --scale 0.9 or --scale 0.95 in it. This is to prevent clipping caused by the encode/decode process.

ah...excellent...so if 2 was close for me, I could try 1.5 to improve it a little bit? Is there a quick way to tell if clipping has occurred?

I wouldn't use the --scale command since it changes the files irrevocably. Undine's suggestion is the best: use mp3gain. That will allow you to boost the volume of your mp3s as well as make them all about the same volume, all while being a completely reversable process that can be undone at a later time if you wish.

Thanks - it seems as though the problem may have to do with how my stereo handles the files - if I play the original CD vs. the mp3 on my computer, the volume sounds virtually identical.

I will look into mp3gain though, sounds great for making the volume the same on the mp3s

Nowadays almost every CD reaches full scale, so mp3gain will not help here. I guess it will want to scale down some files because they are already clipping even without using --scale.

As hipsterdoofus already said, the problem must be how his stereo set decodes the files.

It'd want to scale down the files by default, yes, but since you can set the target volume in mp3gain, it doesn't have to do that. You can crank them to 110 dB if you want, if the clipping is bearable. But yeah, it does seem like an issue with the stereo decoding the files.

ditto what Sunhillow said - ReplayGain / mp3gain will not help here.

If your PC plays the CDs and mp3s at the same volume (digitally; analogue output from CD drive via soundcard doesn't count!), but the stereo doesn't, then the stereo is at fault.

Matching the volume between digital and analogue sources can be tricky - but at least all the digital sources (DVD, CD, mp3) should give the same output for the same input!

(Note: DVDs usually sound quieter because they're recorded quiter - the dialnorm Dolby reference level works a bit like ReplayGain and prevent DVDs from entering the loudness race that plagues CDs).

Cheers,
David.

Thanks for all the info, guys - I see what you are saying about using mp3gain for raising the volume - so as I was saying before, I'm assuming I may still want to use it for keeping the volume consistent between all the albums I'm ripping?

Yes I use mp3gain for that purpose. Be aware however that you nearly always have to adjust the gain on much of your material downwards rather than upwards in order to find a common gain that doesn't clip any tracks. This is sure to disappoint you.

The default target gain is usually 89dB, but many modern CD's will aready be about 95dB or more, so there may be a significant volume reduction on many CD's. You may try increasing the target gain a bit, but in my experience it's difficult to go more than about 91 or 92 dB without clipping some of your material.

Thats ok, I think I'd rather reduce the volume overall and it sound good than increase and cause problems then - so I'm thinking the 89dB may be the best then...