Equalize MP3 Volumes
Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 5:47 pm
the PMA has the following limitations on gain control:
1. in many cases, the headroom you have to adjust the gain does not allow "soft" songs to ever match up to a loud track playing at 0 gain in the EQ menu. sometimes the volumes won't even match up if you max gain on a soft track and minimize gain on the loud track via the EQ.
2. when you adjust gain, there is no visual indicator to show you how close you are to matching the volume levels on two tracks when mixing (on a mixer, it would be the channel gain LEDs) - the only visual indicator available is the waveform, and it does not transform to represent or compare what is happening with/between the two channels when EQ or FX are adjusted.
I just downloaded the freeware app called MP3gain - you just set the target volume, analyze and then apply the track volume you are looking for, and it will batch process an entire folder to get all tracks within 1.5db
and voila, babysitting and guesswork on the EQ gain adjustments in PMA are rarely required - just make sure you put all new tracks through the same process so your whole library matches.
also keep original copies if you are paranoid, the software overwrites the original when processing.
1. in many cases, the headroom you have to adjust the gain does not allow "soft" songs to ever match up to a loud track playing at 0 gain in the EQ menu. sometimes the volumes won't even match up if you max gain on a soft track and minimize gain on the loud track via the EQ.
2. when you adjust gain, there is no visual indicator to show you how close you are to matching the volume levels on two tracks when mixing (on a mixer, it would be the channel gain LEDs) - the only visual indicator available is the waveform, and it does not transform to represent or compare what is happening with/between the two channels when EQ or FX are adjusted.
I just downloaded the freeware app called MP3gain - you just set the target volume, analyze and then apply the track volume you are looking for, and it will batch process an entire folder to get all tracks within 1.5db
and voila, babysitting and guesswork on the EQ gain adjustments in PMA are rarely required - just make sure you put all new tracks through the same process so your whole library matches.
also keep original copies if you are paranoid, the software overwrites the original when processing.