MP3 Gain Freeware App

[Judge]

A freeware program I downloaded yesterday to use in an experiment to see if it can improve my car audio experience regarding my MP3 collection. Love having access to all my favorite tunes over multiple genres. However having 2100 tracks with minor volume differences keeps me having to constantly adjust the volume. Where in my car like so many, louder is better.

"MP3Gain" allows you to amend the volume of multiple tracks at the same time to bring them all within .9 db of each other. Meaning they all play at the same volume. With just a few mouse clicks, I set up my Flash Drive Music folder to make some 2100 tracks (in multiple folders) all with the same volume. The automated process took a little more than two and a half hours to complete and transfer to a 16Gb flash drive. Where all I had to do was sit back and wait.

From looking at the waveforms of some of my audio files in "Audacity", I can see that MP3Gain really did alter all these audio files. Yet while it doesn't impact the compression algorithm. I guess now the real question is how high a uniform level of volume will be required on my car's audio system for them to be heard optimally ?

In theory I should be able to leave the volume setting constant for all my music tracks. We shall see. Today I'll be testing it out when I have to drive across town for my second vaccine innoculation. That should be enough time to listen to varied types of music to see how well they all play at the same level of volume.

With MP3s in general, there's never any guarantee of automatic recording levels pertaining to each track. They all tend to be somewhat different, apart from some being over-modulated with a certain degree of distortion. Things I normally address using "Audacity", another freeware program. "MP3Gain" could help.

 

[Judge]

It worked quite well. The program defaults to a median of 89 db, but I chose to set mine a bit higher- 92db.

 

[Mia]

Good to hear that it's working so far. Sound recording and clarity has really improved from the days of scratchy sounding 45's played on a small plastic turntable.

 

[Rahere]

As a former sound engineer I don't want to compand my playlist. Some works need a volume dynamic, taking you from quiet refective to loud activist is part of the journey.

 

[Judge]

One important thing I've found with this program is to utilize an option and select "Don't clip when doing track gain." If you don't, the process itself will inevitably result in the clipping (distortion) of some of your music tracks. I've gone into Audacity to verify that this works, keeping the waveform from clipping. No point in trying to equalize the volume of all your music tracks if it's going to result in noticeable distortion you previously didn't have.

Though I also discovered that it probably wasn't a good idea to increase the target volume above the default setting of 89db. Once I reset the target to this number it resulted in fewer tracks initially showing clipping. Which amounted to only four percent of my total (2100) tracks. Of course utilizing the option mentioned above made it a moot point, with no tracks at all having clipping. Something I verified by examining the audio tracks in question in Audacity.

Came to the conclusion that it seems like a good way to equalize the volume of so many audio tracks, but only given this particular playlist is used to listen while in riding in the car, and not really intended for critical listening at home.