[Oliver :)]

I've been talking with Manfred Schwind who gave Mac users iVolume for iTunes. If you have no idea what it is, find out here:
http://www.mani.de/en/index.html
iVolume does volume adjustments at your command, and it does them quite well. When you use iTunes "adapt volume" feature, the sound will be degraded a lot, as you sure have noticed. Highs get capped & the whole thing sounds very compressed. Not what we want. iVolume on the contrary leaves the file untouched & just changes the volume. There is a free trial, price is €7 or $9.

Problem: For a while now, iTunes has been ignoring the volume setting of your tracks when burning a sampler CD, using the original volume. On any player that is not your Mac, the tracks would all differ in volume again. So even with iVolume you'd have to use iTunes sub-par adaption again making your CDs sound bad - if you wanted equal volume. Totally silly, and no way around it inside iTunes.

Solution: Manfred has next to no time at the moment, but he is planning to add a CD-burning feature to iVolume, thereby avoiding the problem with iTunes.

My idea: I am not affiliated with Manfred, but I like iVolume, and I like the few CDs I burn to have tracks of equal volume. I would very well go out and pay again for a new iVolume with that essential feature. Knowing that there are loads of quality-conscious iTunes users here, I want to find out how many of you feel the same need as I do. Please go and use the poll, I will submit the results to Manfred Schwing in a couple of days. Maybe if there's enough demand we'll see this feature soon.

 

[Oliver :)]

So apart from me there is only a single person with an opinion on this issue?

Come on people, it is not that we did not talk about this issue before. And you cannot tell me that you didn't notice how crappy iTunes built-in adaption is (if you truely didn't it is high time to give it a listen in order to find out).

 

[blak-jak]

bit of a pitty its only for OS X, but why not just use mp3gain/aacgain to fix up any volume issues, this is what I do, works quite well and quite fast...

then again why use itunes for anything more than just transfering music to your ipod, nero is for burning, itunes for transfer, foobar for playing, eac+lame for ripping... its not simple, but far from complex

 

[shimage]

How about "I use replaygain, but I'm not going to pay money for it"? This is the first shareware implementation I've seen; usually it's freeware, if not opensourced.

 

[Oliver :)]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blak-jak bit of a pitty its only for OS X, but why not just use mp3gain/aacgain to fix up any volume issues, this is what I do, works quite well and quite fast... then again why use itunes for anything more than just transfering music to your ipod, nero is for burning, itunes for transfer, foobar for playing, eac+lame for ripping... its not simple, but far from complex

Please tell me how to tell Nero (Nero for OS X? Where?) that you made that nice volume correction with mp3gain and that you would like to have it active on the CD nero burns. Keep in mind that we are looking for something that does exactly as mp3gain does and no simple peak analysis. Does mp3gain permanently change the file?

 

[shimage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oliver Please tell me how to tell Nero (Nero for OS X? Where?) that you made that nice volume correction with mp3gain and that you would like to have it active on the CD nero burns. Keep in mind that we are looking for something that does exactly as mp3gain does and no simple peak analysis. Does mp3gain permanently change the file?

Yes, mp3gain changes the actual levels in the file. The change is only permanent if you don't store the level adjustments somewhere

It breaks spec, but then again, there aren't many programs/DAPs out there that respect replaygain tags (and I was under the impression that you'd end up breaking the id3 spec if you added them anyway), so at least it works with everything.

EDIT: Hmm. Well, the adjustment is psuedo-reversible. You can set the level back to where it was before, but you won't get back the information that you clipped out of the signal when you changed the level in the first place (but this will only happen once, for obvious reasons). But this always happens on decode of replaygained files anyway, so if you're using it, there isn't any point in crying over this. I, for one, don't think this loss is audible; you threw away more information when you encoded the file anyway.

 

[Oliver :)]

I'm having a look at MacMP3Gain right now, it does not seem as though I want to use it. Especially since there is no easy "undo" function.
From the FAQ: " I would highly recommend a full backup of your MP3 library prior to running mp3gain on them"
This might be well possible with 30GB worth of MP3, I am facing about 160GB of ALAC.
iVolume might be worth the $7 for the simple "restore" button alone.

 

[blak-jak]

i guess that Macmp3gain is not as mature as the windows equivalent? But you can reverse any changes that have been done

Quote:

MP3Gain stores "Analysis" and "Undo" information in special tags inside the mp3 file itself. These tags are in the APEv2 format. APEv2 tags are carefully designed to not interfere with other tag formats, such as the popular ID3v1 format.

Quote:

To remove tags that MP3Gain has already written, simply load the affected mp3s into MP3Gain and do "Options - Tags - Remove Tags from files"

this is from the windows program....

Anyhow, i use mp3gain/aacgain lower the level on my music collection so i can enable EQ setting on my ipod without distortion. So i have no intention on undoing my actions.

 

[Jahn]

not an issue for me - i turn off volume attenuation, eq, anything messing with the track. if a track is just too darn quiet, i'll use a wave editing program and up the volume for it - not so high that it will compress the peaks tho.

 

[Oliver :)]

I am really a wee bit surprised by the answers up until now. It seems to me you folks rarely make mix-CDs or mixed playlists?

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oliver I am really a wee bit surprised by the answers up until now. It seems to me you folks rarely make mix-CDs or mixed playlists?

i have to admit, i almost never use itunes to rip CDs. i use playlists on itunes all the time, but most of my tracks are pulled off of CDs that are recorded nicely, so none have volume issues.

 

[bundee1]

Ive burned a few mixes and even the playlists on my Ipod need some volume equalization but I dont use it for fear of degrading the sound. I think your poll should ask if Itunes should incorporate this into future editions.

 

[Oliver :)]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bundee1 Ive burned a few mixes and even the playlists on my Ipod need some volume equalization but I dont use it for fear of degrading the sound. I think your poll should ask if Itunes should incorporate this into future editions.

The good thing about iVolume is that it is completely non-destructive. Even if you allow clipping you can always restore the original values. Since it does nothing but changing the volume (it's the same algorythm as in mp3gain I presume) it does not degrade the sound in any way. In fact this is how iTunes volume adaption should have worked straight away, I wonder how the peak-analysis junk it has could ever pass quality control.

 

[shimage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn not an issue for me - i turn off volume attenuation, eq, anything messing with the track. if a track is just too darn quiet, i'll use a wave editing program and up the volume for it - not so high that it will compress the peaks tho.

The only messing is a digital "attenuation". All that incurs—aside from a lower volume level—is a decrease in the theoretical dynamic range by the amount of attenuation (so if you drop the level by 10 dB, you decrease the dynamic range by 10 dB) [Note, this is no different from what you're doing with the wave editor by hand, btw]. But it's the theoretical dynamic range. The albums that need the most attenuation (which you evidently don't listen to) don't lose anything by dropping the levels. Noise floor on even good recordings is usually around -70 dB anyway, so even if you lopped off 15 dB (an absurdly high value), you'd still have about 10 dB of room left, since you're truncating the bottom (where I assume you're hitting 0 dB on the peaks). For things that are too quiet, you can have problems, since now you have to worry about clipping (as you've pointed out). This is why it's generally better to lower the level than to increase it. If you're paranoid about it, that's fine, I just thought I'd throw this out there.

WRT Oliver's concerns, iTunes is completely useless to me for a variety of reasons, so I use other things. On my mac, I usually use xmms, which does support replaygain tags (as well as ogg and FLAC). Different strokes for different folks. You do what suits your needs the best

 

[Jahn]

yep, usually when i use the wave editor, it's to increase the volume, and the danger of clipping is big- i always watch the peaks so they don't get anywhere near Ye Olde "0." I don't trust itunes to futz around with my tunes.

Plenty of my CDs have crappy hot recordings, but having itunes do a volume limiter thing on it won't help - no matter what volume level, it will sound sizzly. It doesn't matter how cold the bacon is - if it's burnt, it's burnt.