Hi, That's really helpful of you,- thanks, i'd appreciate your input.
I think other peeps might find it useful.Works for me.Soz no screenshots but Im a cabbage.The program sites have it all anyway.
INCREASE VOLUME FOR IPOD ETC
Thanks to the EEC, a lot of portable MP3 devices have built in noise limiters which in effect means no more loud music that might damage the ear. So much so that in most cases, you cant listen to music at a decent level in noisy environments etc. The easiest thing to do is to buy outside the EEC. American ones donât have this limiter. When music is downloaded or ripped, it is down so at different sound levels which means that some tracks seem louder than others which is annoying. If a variable bit rate is used in the recording instead of a constant bit rate, some players have difficulty in recognising the correct length of the track which confuses both the player and listener.By using two free programs, these problems will be solved by
a)Ensuring every track is louder
b)Ensuring every track has the same volume level
c)Ensuring that every track has the correct time values.
I am assuming that the mp3âs are correctly tagged ie: displaying artist, track name album name etc.This can be done in itunes, but I personally use an older program called Musicmatch which is one (in my opinion) of the best music players ever in that it allows you to rip, convert, listen, tag name and album art in one interface. Doesnt work with W7 though, as Musicmatch is long defunct and unsupported having been bought by Yahoo! and shelved.
The programs that you will need are
1)Foobar2000
Download foobar2000 and optional components
2)MP3Gain
MP3Gain Downloads Choose
mp3gain-win-1_2_5.exe
Foobar is in itself a very useful media player that does most of what Musicmatch does including tagging, but Ive used MM for years and Im happy with it. Foobar will make sure that the MP3 is clean in that its recognised properly by the player in that it fixes the time issue and rebuilds the MP3 stream. Works with all Windows platforms.
MP3Gain will increase the volume of the track, and by processing many tracks will make them all the same volume. Will also show you at what volume they were originally processed at. Some will be higher than others.Works with all Windows platforms.
Foobar 2000
Having downloaded, keep a shortcut on your desktop.
Open Foobar. A pretty plain window opens that has at the top FILE EDIT VIEW PLAYBACK LIBRARY HELP.
In the main window will be PLAYING ARTIST/ALBUM TRACK TITLE/ARTIST DURATION.
This is the main window that you need to drag and drop your music into either individually or by album etc.
Drag an album into this window, all titles will be displayed individually.Highlight one track by a left click, and then press CONTROL and A on your keyboard to highlight all tracks.Right click on any track to bring up a drop down menu. Select UTILITIES and FIX VBR MP3 HEADER. A âdo you want to continueâ box appears, click âyesâ.Wait and you are done.
Do the same again but select REBUILD MP3 STREAM. Again click âyesâ and you are done with Foobar for this process.One problem that might occur when using Foobar is that the options to Fix and Rebuild disappear.This is because too many tracks have been loaded into the window. Try cutting them down, until the option reappears.
MP3Gain
Having downloaded, keep a shortcut on your desktop.
Open MP3Gain.You will see a box that you can put in your required volume into, the default is 89db, but I have found that 98db suits. Enter this amount.Drag all your âFoobardâ files into the main window, and click the âTrack Analysisâ icon.Once done, you can see the different sound volumes of each file. Click âTrack Gainâ and wait.Depending on how many music files are in the windows depends how long it takes!!. Ive done 300gb in 20gb stages. Took ages, but ALL my music is now tidy and sounds the same.
Close both programs and youre done.If you find that 98db doesnât suit, then increase or decrease the value till youre happy.
Enjoy.
