Adjusting Volume on Audio Files

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MrBellamy
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Adjusting Volume on Audio Files

Post by MrBellamy »

Hi All,

I was hoping a talented individual on the forum could post some tips (or tutorial) on how to best adjust the volume on audio tracks so the tracks all play at the same volume when burned to a CD.

I'm looking to adjust the volume tracks (official and non official) to make to my own compilations. There is nothing more annoying to have the volume go up or down drastically track to track while listening to a mix/compilation.

I have a program similar to Audacity but I've never been able to figure out the best way to do it.

Any tips are greatly appreciated!

Cheers!
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Tex
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Re: Adjusting Volume on Audio Files

Post by Tex »

Try "Normalize".

You can force it higher by just raising the volume and making the bulk of the waveform closer to the top if you don't mind chopping off some peaks.

If you want an even louder sound you can use a multi-band compressor but that would be altering the sound. Having said that these songs were compressed during recording and mixing to begin with.
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Lord Reith
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Re: Adjusting Volume on Audio Files

Post by Lord Reith »

You need something that normalizes according to the RMS (root mean square). Normalizing by volume peaks alone doesn't really work because our ears don't hear that way. A song which peaks at 60% can sound louder than a different song that peaks at 100%

You can use XMedia Recode and in the audio tab under "Volume Correction" you set it to "Volume Normalization(dB) with a value of, say, 90. Don't forget to set the destination file as a lossless format (use WAVE if you intend to burn to cd). I can verify that this produces mix cds which have a constant volume between songs.


www.xmedia-recode.de
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