[jacksonpt]

I bought my wife an MP3 player for Mother's Day, and now the task of ripping our CDs begins. Anyone know of some good software for normalizing the files (making them all the same volume level)?

 

[binary visions]

I haven't really had to normalize my MP3s, I find they have relatively the same volume.

I highly recommend Exact Audio Copy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) for ripping from CDs, since many of the faster rippers will leave your files with errors in them which can translate into some jarring little audio artifacts.

I've ripped about a hundred CDs and have not had any that really required adjustment to the recorded volumn.

 

[Ridemonkey]

iTunes does that I believe.

 

[binary visions]

iTunes does that I believe.

I ripped a whole bunch of CDs through iTunes and ended up with a bunch of errors in my tracks. I ended up deleting everything and re-ripping it.

I think it depends partly on the quality/age of your CD burner, I've got a fairly cheap one from a few years ago - but EAC rips everything flawlessly.

 

[D_D]

Try mp3Gain.

I expect itunes uses their own implementation of replaygain which only works in itunes and on ipods.

 

[Toshi]

iTunes does that I believe.

yup, the SoundCheck checkbox in iTunes does what the original poster is looking for. it doesn't modify the files, however, but rather adds a snippet of metadata that tells iTunes/iPod to adjust volume accordingly.

 

[narlus]

replaygain does the same thing i believe.

BV, glad to see you are an EAC convert.

 

[binary visions]

replaygain does the same thing i believe.

BV, glad to see you are an EAC convert.

Actually, I was using EAC back when it was a command line only program, still in development. Then I spent a long time without any CDs to rip (my collection was stolen). They've come a long way with it

 

[D_D]

replaygain does the same thing i believe.

Yes but the decoder has to be aware of the metadata and use it. AFAIK the only portables that do for mp3 are those that do software decoding running rockbox.

 

[Kornphlake]

I just bought an Alpine headunit with wma/mp3 playback and it seems like when I read through the instruction manual there was a function on the headunit that will adjust the volume so that each track is the same. All my files are wma (I don't know why I picked wma but I've got more than a few gb now and I'm not going to change) I can't tell a difference in volume from album to album in the car, it may be different with mp3. The downside is that some times I switch to the radio and either get the doors blasted off (literally, I've got a loud system, I can't figure out why guys need dual 12" subs) or I switch to the radio and can't hear a thing.

I figure if car audio has firmware to normalize the volume, personal mp3 players can't be far behind. Volume correcting may become available with firmware upgrades to existing players.