Audio Balancing
Something that always bugs me when I'm listening to music is that a lot of the tracks have really uneven volume i.e. At 50% volume one might be ear bleeding and another is barely audible, I was wondering if anyone knew of any decent programs for balancing them, a friend of mine said the had a good one, but he had no idea what it was called or where he got it.
Just to clarify this is the kind of thing I mean
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2QdDbelmY]Low volume track[/url]
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yWcgzI4gEw]Higher volume track[/url]
July 23, 2013
19 Comments • Newest first
[quote=SuberKieran]@BobR: Ahhhh alright thanks Bob also I kinda deleted all the converted files, the program was kinda sketchy and I feel like it probably reduced the quality of the m4a's[/quote]There may be settings in the converter programs that let you track the same "bit rate" as the original file so the quality should be comparable.
Be careful the default setting isn't lower than you like though, because that -would- lower the quality.
@BobR: Ahhhh alright thanks Bob also I kinda deleted all the converted files, the program was kinda sketchy and I feel like it probably reduced the quality of the m4a's
[quote=SuberKieran]Something that always bugs me when I'm listening to music is that a lot of the tracks have really uneven volume i.e. At 50% volume one might be ear bleeding and another is barely audible, I was wondering if anyone knew of any decent programs for balancing them, a friend of mine said the had a good one, but he had no idea what it was called or where he got it.[/quote]
The process you're looking for is called "normalize".
If you go back to that MP3Gain site and look down in the notes for the 08 January 2005 entry, there's instructions showing how to add m4a compatibility to the program
You could also just Google "normalize m4a" for other possible choices.
Also, if you're going to convert everything to MP3, some converter programs also have the ability to normalize volume levels while they're converting so everything comes out the same.
It's usually entire albums that will occasionally have different sound levels than most other songs.
http://osxdaily.com/2010/05/25/let-itunes-automatically-adjust-sound-volume-to-play-songs-at-the-same-level/
It'll work with Windows too. Ditch WMP.
@dracox5234 Thanks for all the help, and it wouldn't accept any of my files that weren't MP3's I ended up just getting a converter, I'm making everything into an MP3 right now and I'm going equalize the volume once that's finished.
@SuberKieran: Equalizing the volume might not take a short time either, but if you insist the program that I googled also does .m4a so you could try it.
@dracox5234 I know I could but I have 100+ things and 80%+ aren't in MP3 format and I really don't want to have to re-download it all T_T
@dracox5234 Thanks I'll give it a try, but most of my stuff is in .m4a
@SuberKieran: ah, well I just googled "mp3 volume adjustment software" and first result was http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ stating in the first sentence "Tired of reaching for your volume knob every time your mp3 player changes to a new song?" Id give it a try.
@dracox5234: It's not that the tracks are messed up, some things are just louder than others and for convinience I'm trying to get the audio on all of the them at similar levels. Like if I go running or something, and I have my MP3 player I don't want to have to stop, turn up or down the volume every time it changes.
@Burning it's not an issue with the hardware, it's just the volume levels on my files have a fairly wide range and I want to find a program to get them in a smaller range.
Anyways...
If you can identify your computer's sound card / sound chip, I may be familiar with its control driver interface. If your lucky and you have something like a Realtek audio chip, then you can adjust the stereo volume balance.
If you don't know how to find this, let me know which version of Windows you are running - XP, Vista, 7, 8 - and I can give instructions on how to find your audio chip.
@Flexography: Most of my recordings are pretty good and if they aren't I delete them.
@Flexography Yeah it's better that's great, but can it balance my tracks, I don't want to download it unless I have to, I don't particularly like Apple.
@Flexography: Honestly I know it's crap, but it got the job done.
Seriously though if I download iTunes can I use that to balance my tracks?
@dracox5234 I got some from friends, Monstercat has a lot of stuff you can get for free (I like to avoid pirating if I can), and if I really like I song I'll pirate it and I have a few from old CD's.
@SuberKieran @Flexography
Itunes is pretty crap imo, there's a few songs that work fine in wmp, but get messed up on itunes.
most likely if they're messed up on wmp, they're messed up on itunes
& wmp is not crap it's better than itunes generally
may I ask where you got your mp3s from?
@Flexography I was just using Windows Media Player, didn't ever really need anything else.
@askmiller3 I know I can edit individual tracks with audacity, but I want something that can just take all of them at once and balance out the audio.
@Flexography I don't have an iPod or iTunes. If I just went downloaded iTunes could I use it for that?
@Burning Nope it's not my headphones.
Have you determined if this a problem with the headphones, the computer, or your hearing?