Re: [TCLUG:14508] Normalizing MP3s

[Philip C Mendelsohn <mend0070@tc.umn.edu>]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Dave Sherohman wrote:

> I'm currently using cdgrab (which in turn is ripping with cdparanoia and
> compressing with lame) to transfer CDs to MP3, but I'm running into problems
> with CDs being recorded at different levels.  Can anyone suggest a tool which
> will normalize all tracks to peak at nn% of maximum volume at some point in
> the process?  (One that goes back over an existing MP3 file and normalizes it
> would be ideal, but if I have to rerip the tracks to get them normalized,
> then so be it.)

This isn't the place to talk about heavy audio stuff, but suffice it to
say that just because you do this doesn't mean you'll have the results you
are looking for.

Volume is not set by the peak levels, but rather the peak to average
ratio.  I can show you a file that peaks with 0 headroom that is much
softer than one that peaks at 50% (6dB softer.)

Anyway, there are lots of programs that can do this to your file before it
goes to MP3; you won't be able to do this to an encoded file most likely,
because level affects the encoding in various (complex) ways.  Any program
that did would decode, process, and re-encode for you.  I don't think
anyone's written that (In my experience.)

Best,

Phil M

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