Do you listen to mp3's while riding?

[Fred W]

A major source of frustration for me when riding and listening to MP3s, either from an iPod, or my Garmin GPS has been the tendency of the volume of the music to vary widely, requiring constant fiddling with the playback device. This is not good for safety sake and it's a royal PITA which cuts down on personal enjoyment even when not on the bike.

The vast majority of my music library are songs that I have ripped from the CDs that I own. Even these ripped mp3's were varying in volume intensely from album to album, such that when on shuffle I was constantly having to tweak the playback volume.

So here's the solution, and the beauty part is, it's FREE! :yahoo: :

MP3gain website

Download this freeware utility. Run it on all of your MP3's on your hard drive (this takes some time) and then refresh your player with the modified files. The utility will normalize the volume of all of the files and will automatically set the volume low enough to eliminate any clipping during playback. It does not compress the audio as some other volume adjustment utilities do, so you still get full dynamic range. I was surprised to note how many of my files were (possibly) clipping before running the normalization.

I believe that this utility will only work on .mp3's, (ie not iPod's native .m4a or windows .wma). I long ago converted all of my music files to mp3 for use on non-apple / non-windows players, so this was no concern for me.

Now the volume during playback, once set, will remain comfortable from song to song and album to album and I believe the distortion level when playing off the Garmin is better than it was before.

 

[HaulinAshe]

Great find, thanks!

I had done some searching in the past for just such an animal, but laziness set in and...

Windows Media Player will do a decent job of "normalizing" volume levels, but you have to go back and re-RIP everything to make it retroactive. Yuck!!!

Now how long will it take to normalize 200 GB of MP3s???

 

[Scab]

Great find, thanks!
I had done some searching in the past for just such an animal, but laziness set in and...

Windows Media Player will do a decent job of "normalizing" volume levels, but you have to go back and re-RIP everything to make it retroactive. Yuck!!!

Now how long will it take to normalize 200 GB of MP3s???

200 GIGS!!???

(I need to borrow your HD...)

 

[Silent]

Nice find

Another way to smooth out the volume on iPods is to go into the settings, and turn on "Sound Check" it does a decent job so you don't have to fiddle with the volume as much.

 

[Fred W]

Great find, thanks!
I had done some searching in the past for just such an animal, but laziness set in and...

Windows Media Player will do a decent job of "normalizing" volume levels, but you have to go back and re-RIP everything to make it retroactive. Yuck!!!

Now how long will it take to normalize 200 GB of MP3s???

Well, I did 20GB overnight so I don't know how long that actually took. The process goes in two stages, the first being the more time consuming is the "Analysis". Applying the gain adjustment is relatively quick. Once you have done the analysis the program keeps track of these values. I have not read the entire help file yet, but I assume that it does this in the music's mp3 header.

You could also do them in batches (by artist, or however you have them grouped) to make the time to completion more palatable. I did my analysis using the "Album analysis" routine and then applied the gains using "Track Gains". Make sure that you go into the options menu and select "don't clip when doing track gain" option. That way it automagically sets the clippers to the highest level it can get without clipping up to the target value.

One other thing for those using iTunes and iPods. If you have ever gone in and done any volume adjustment in the iTunes "file info" you will want to undo that after getting your files normalized by this utility. Just select all you music files, right click and select "Get Info", then click the check box necxt to the volume adjust slider and set to none, then OK.

 

[Fred W]

Nice find
Another way to smooth out the volume on iPods is to go into the settings, and turn on "Sound Check" it does a decent job so you don't have to fiddle with the volume as much.

I tried that. It made things worse as far aas I could tell. This is more work, but once completed is Muy Bueno :yahoo:

 

[eg23232]

This was a great feature of MusicMatch, it called volume levelling. Unfortunately, Yahoo had to go and buy out MusicMatch and I have to say Yahoo's version sucks. Can't store streams and playlists and can't record from line in. I'm using an old version of MusicMatch that luckily still works, however somehow it lost the ability to record from line in (which I used a lot to transfer my vinyl). Anyway, you can find MusicMatch versions still out there and they'll level your whole library, or you can set it to level when you rip or burn.

 

[snikr]

This was a great feature of MusicMatch, it called volume levelling. Unfortunately, Yahoo had to go and buy out MusicMatch and I have to say Yahoo's version sucks. Can't store streams and playlists and can't record from line in. I'm using an old version of MusicMatch that luckily still works, however somehow it lost the ability to record from line in (which I used a lot to transfer my vinyl). Anyway, you can find MusicMatch versions still out there and they'll level your whole library, or you can set it to level when you rip or burn.

I use MusicMatch and the volume leveling didn't seem to work all that good. It helped some but if the tunes was WAY OFF one way or the other it didn't do as good a job. I'm going to try this program.

Tom

 

[Wrenchtwistr]

I've been using Media Monkey, which offers lots of the same options as iTunes and other for free, without the lockdown hassles...

Check it out here: www.mediamonkey.com

The 'gold' version offers a few more bells and whistles and works great for my media collection which consists of 50,000 songs, and over 90 movies and TV shows! It also allows you to synch to apple devices as well as any other ram cards. Been working great for me! Volume leveling is a standard feature...

Wrench

 

[MrTwisty]

Good find. Thanks for sharing. :clapping:

 

[Roy Epperson]

<snip>I believe that this utility will only work on .mp3's, (ie not iPod's native .wm4 or windows .wma). I long ago converted all of my music files to mp3 for use on non-apple / non-windows players, so this was no concern for me.

How did you convert your wma files to mp3?

 

[dean]

i have my mp3 on random, and i've not noticed too wide of a difference with the exception of when one particular band comes on: green day. good Lord, their songs are distinctively louder than anything else, and i have many songs of that same genre/type. doesn't matter what i'm doing on the bike, when g/d comes on, i'm fishin' for the volume control.

dean

cincinnati

 

[Fred W]

<snip>I believe that this utility will only work on .mp3's, (ie not iPod's native .wm4 or windows .wma). I long ago converted all of my music files to mp3 for use on non-apple / non-windows players, so this was no concern for me.

How did you convert your wma files to mp3?

Roy,

I think I used Musicmatch at the time, but have abandoned it since the Yahoo hostile takeover.

iTunes will do these conversions for you. In fact I have it set to automatically convert files to mp3 if/when I add them to the library.

i have my mp3 on random, and i've not noticed too wide of a difference with the exception of when one particular band comes on: green day. good Lord, their songs are distinctively louder than anything else, and i have many songs of that same genre/type. doesn't matter what i'm doing on the bike, when g/d comes on, i'm fishin' for the volume control.
dean

cincinnati

Dean,

You can use this utility to permanently adjust the volume just on the albums or tracks that you know are way off (I have Dookie in my collection too). That would be very fast if you already know which ones need fix'n.

The nice thing is that once fixed they stay fixed unless you want to unfix them, but I have no idea why you would want that. In fact I'm not sure why the music industry doesn't have a standard average 89dB level for all recorded CDs already. Are they encouraging distortion during playback? I have noticed that the vast majority of music I ripped comes close to that. It's those outliers that are a PITA.

 

[DaSpyda]

This was a great feature of MusicMatch, it called volume levelling. Unfortunately, Yahoo had to go and buy out MusicMatch and I have to say Yahoo's version sucks. Can't store streams and playlists and can't record from line in. I'm using an old version of MusicMatch that luckily still works, however somehow it lost the ability to record from line in (which I used a lot to transfer my vinyl). Anyway, you can find MusicMatch versions still out there and they'll level your whole library, or you can set it to level when you rip or burn.

Audacity from download.com is a great program...and it's free.

Also, Winamp has Internet Radio, and there's a Plugin you can use to rip the streams. I rip all night, slice up the huge MP3 with MP3 Surgeon into 2 hour blocks, and load it onto my Ipod with Winamp.

I do the same thing with Audacity and Line In from my cable TV music channels.

My 4GB Nano holds almost 2.5 days of commercial-free music.

 

[Fred W]

Since I started this mess of a thread, I guess it's ok if I help it drift a bit.

Along the same lines as intarwebs ray-dee-oh is a web site called Pandora that I've played with. It let's you input a music selection or more and it forms a "station". It then goes out and tries to find other music to stream to you that is similar. As they pop up on your computer you can give the selections a thumbs up (yeah I like that) or thumbs down, in which case it aborts playing that song and looks for more that you will like.

Supposedly the thing learns from your inputs and after a while you have a "playlist" of sorts, except that there is no list, it just grabs music in the same genre. You can have multiple stations configured in your free account.

I have an RCA Lyra wireless transmitter connected to my desktop PC and 2 wireless receivers attached to entertainment centers in two rooms in my house (Living room and Family room). I can set the thing playing the same music all over the house, never listen to an advertisement, and it's like I was picking the music!!

It's tres cool...

https://www.pandora.com/

edit: I forgot to mention they will intersperse innocuous ads on the free version every so many songs. Subscriptions get no ads.

 

[HaulinAshe]

I massaged about 4GB of MP3s to the default of 89.? percent. Had to up the Zumo MP3 audio setting to 100% and bumped the master volume up a full notch to nearly 90%.

What settings are you using? I'm thinking the next test will be at 95 or 98%. But the software does a very nice job of equalizing tracks.

 

[Fred W]

I massaged about 4GB of MP3s to the default of 89.? percent. Had to up the Zumo MP3 audio setting to 100% and bumped the master volume up a full notch to nearly 90%.
What settings are you using? I'm thinking the next test will be at 95 or 98%. But the software does a very nice job of equalizing tracks.

Jeff,

I'm using the default 89 dB. I don't have a Zumo, I use a Garmin C550, but I'm running close to the max volume and no distortion. Which is quite better than I had before where I had lots of distortion on even the tracks that were not too loud.

What are you running the audio through after the zumo? Starcom or autocom? Just curious. I'm still using a Motocom (mono) because my starcom is on backorder with Jeff at Bike Effects.

 

[HaulinAshe]

What are you running the audio through after the zumo? Starcom or autocom? Just curious. I'm still using a Motocom (mono) because my starcom is on backorder with Jeff at Bike Effects.

Zumo 550 to Starcomm Advance to wired headset(s).

The Starcomm Volume is about 50%, which gives it the best compensation for wind noise/speed/etc. Two problems with that setting is that it requires an appreciable input from the incoming audio sources, and it will blow out your ears when I sing inside the helmet!



Typically I run the Zumo's; NAV Audio at 100%, MP3 Audio at 80%, Master Volume at 3-bars below max.

Today I ran MP3 Audio at 100% and Master Volume at 2-bars below max. That's about where I set it for older MP3 files with the low volume gains. So I'm thinking that I need to normalize the files at a higher setting.

 

[road runner]

What are you running the audio through after the zumo? Starcom or autocom? Just curious. I'm still using a Motocom (mono) because my starcom is on backorder with Jeff at Bike Effects.

Zumo 550 to Starcomm Advance to wired headset(s).

The Starcomm Volume is about 50%, which gives it the best compensation for wind noise/speed/etc. Two problems with that setting is that it requires an appreciable input from the incoming audio sources, and it will blow out your ears when I sing inside the helmet!



Typically I run the Zumo's; NAV Audio at 100%, MP3 Audio at 80%, Master Volume at 3-bars below max.

Today I ran MP3 Audio at 100% and Master Volume at 2-bars below max. That's about where I set it for older MP3 files with the low volume gains. So I'm thinking that I need to normalize the files at a higher setting.

There is a post on Zumo Forum about using the MP3 Gain, and I think it said to use 97 dbs. I have not tried it yet, but they say it works.

A.C.