MP3 recording level?

I've recently got a new car and it has an MP3 compatible CD player, amongst many other toys

I'm a complete novice at MP3, as whenever I've heard it in the past (through home hi-fi systems) it sounded dire. However, I did try it out and it's more than adequate for listening to in a car. And I just love being able to have loads and loads of albums all on one disc, complete with album/track name, etc.!

However, I've noticed that the playback level on MP3 is noticeably lower than on radio or CD ~ which is a bit of a pain as I have to advance the volume control and then get blasted by the RDS traffic announcements (even with the announcement volume set at its minimum level). I've only been using Windows Media Player to create the MP3 files ~ is there software that allows adjustment of the recording level, or am I just being silly and demonstrating some basic misunderstanding of MP3?

Thanks.

 

you need to use the "normalize" option on your mp3 ripper software.
you can also use this to normalize already-created mp3 files.
http://www.infopackets.com/channels...3/20031023_freeware_mp3_volume_normalizer.htm
hope this helps

 

Nearly everything ripped from a modern CD will be normalised already so you are probably just going to have to live with it.

 

Folks: can't totally go along with this 'normalising' idea...

Whilst a lot of top-20 'pop' music has limited dynamic range (and so 'normalising' is reasonable), much music recorded, either commercially or at home, varies enormously in dynamic 'span'. So, if e.g. you have a quiet piano piece followed by a loud orchestral piece the act of 'normalising' will create a grossly imbalanced result from track to track. Even with un- hi-fi mp3 files this can be very intrusive.

There are 1-2 progs that attempt to 'average' the pieces. They do in practice have limitations; nothing replaces a good lug-hole .

keep the phase
keith

 

Keith, you are talking about compression. Normalising just finds the loudest part and brings up the whole level of the recording so it uses the full range of the medium.

For example if you had a recording where the peak level only ever hit -6dB it would boost the whole lot so that the peaks hit exactly 0dB.

 

No. Compression is the 'closing up' of the dynamic range; not the averaging out of the dynamic range of a set of tracks.

I believe my point remains .

keep the phase
keith

 

Having restored music for the best/worst part of 10 years, I find that the production of an album that is sourced from various originals – even shellacs (i.e. “78sâ€Â) that innately have limited dynamic range and frequency range – always has to be auditioned for 'average' sound levels (or else the listener is forever jumping up to turn the volume up/down).

Setting the loudest part of a symphony to 0db (which most 'normalisation' progs work to), then doing the same to a song that has a far narrower dynamic width, means that the song will turn out sounding far louder than it should, relationally. When comparing these 2 tracks, the loudest part of the song may need to be adjusted as much as -4db or -5db lower.

This has nothing to do with compression/expansion, but is the moving of a track's innate dynamic range in relation to that of the tracks around it.

The 2 'averaging' software progs I have used have their limitations (as they freely state themselves), where types of music vary a lot. Nice to know humans aren't completely redundant .

keep the phase
keith

 

What do you mean exactly? The way compression works, the lower the level of the signal, the more it gets boosted, so the average level of the recording is higher and the dynamic range is less.

Even so, normalising definitely does not alter the dynamics of the recording. If that’s what the ripper does then they are naming it incorrectly.

 

I get your point Keith, but anyway it is moot whether normalising would help Linearman's problem as I can't see that there's the option in Windows media player anyway

 

Thanks for the replies ~ it seems as though I'll have to live with the problem.

I was hoping that software with record level adjustment was available (i.e. same as recording to my mini disc player), but it seems as if it isn't.

BTW, there is no normalisation option in Windows Media or Real and I can't be bothered to try out the program linked to above, as it seems from your replies that it would be of limited value. Besides, the problem is not one of differing volume between tracks (or clips), but that generally the output from MP3 is lower than from CD or radio.

 

have you talked to the dealer you bought the car from? it sounds like there might be a problem with the equipment. it might at least be worth a try....

 

There is, but the chances are that it is already recorded at maximum volume.

 

I may have solved the problem. As an experiment, I changed to a much higher bit rate, burnt a new CD et voila!

I've no idea why this worked and, frankly, I don't care