I have a bunch of MP3's and I would like to burn an audio CD. Since the mp3 come from different discs, their volume is different, and I would like to process them, before burning, to equalize their volume level.
I know thet Nero has a proper option, called 'normalize', which performs the task perfectly.
Alas, I need to perform such a task in a computer where Nero is not installed, and I tried to find in internet an application which can perform it.
Alas, when I searched 'normalize' I found applications which can rise or lower the audio level of a single file, but this is not what I need.
I would like to find an application which automatically put all audio levels equal.
Das such an application (free would be appreciaed) exists?
Thanks a lot
Audacity has a normalize effect which you can apply to a batch of files (except it calls it a 'chain').
It's free and might suit your purpose.
First download, install and run Audacity.
Click 'Edit' > 'Preferences' > 'Libraries' and either locate the MP3 and FFmpeg libraries on your PC or download them.
Once that's done, click 'File' > 'Edit Chain..'.
On the left pane, there should be a default chain called 'MP3 conversion':the right pane should show the commands associated with it.
They should be 'Normalize' and 'Export MP3'.
If that's ok, get back to the main menu and click 'File' > 'Apply Chain' and choose the MP3 Conversion chain.
Select 'Apply to files..' and browse to and select the files to be processed.
When you open them, Audacity will immediately start processing the files and save them in a new default folder called 'Cleaned'.
Since you are making an audio cd, you could export the processed files in wav format.
To do that you would modify or create a new chain...which is simple enough.
Check out Media Monkey. You can get a free version and it has an options to normalize a disk. It has a great set of burning options and is relatively idiot proof. I use it to burn all my listening CDs. I use a professional burn app to make an archive CD. If there is any difference between the quality of 2 CD burn apps a human can't hear the difference.
K3B does it on the fly.. as long as you have "normalize-audio" installed :)
My personal view is these automatic volume limiters/amplifiers make a lot of noise and what I liken to "partition noise" in valve pentode amps.. I find it's better to treat each track as it's own entity and set the levels manually using something like Audacity to just hit the 0dB on peaks.
Obviously.. I'm forgetting dbpoweramp.. swiss army knife of ripping and processing digital music (unless you are a Rosegarden user like me)
Use MP3Gain. It's purpose it to adjust the volume of MP3 files according to how loud they sound to the human ear, using ReplayGain to analyze the MP3s. It's much better than "peak normalization" for adjusting audio if the same volume from one track to the next is the desired result. I run all my MP3s through MP3Gain before putting them on the MP3 player and there's no longer any need to be constantly adjusting the volume for each track.
MP3s happen to be the only audio type for which the volume can be adjusted without re-encoding. MP3Gain analyses each MP3, adjusts their volumes, and saves the volume info to an MP3 tag. That way, it can use the info later on to reverse the volume changes if you want it to. MP3Gain has two methods for adjusting volume using ReplayGain. One's called "Track Gain", the other "Album Gain". The first will adjust all MP3s to an equal level, the second adjusts the volume of a group of MP3s by the same amount. The idea being you can use ReplayGain on a whole CD while keeping the relative volume of each track the same. You'll want to use Track Gain though.
For other file types a decent software audio player will analyze pretty much any type of audio using ReplayGain, then save the info to tags. On playback it'll read the tags and automatically adjust the playback volume for each track accordingly. That's how ReplayGain was intended to work so there's no need to re-encode the audio to adjust the volume, but it's not well supported by portable audio players. Fortunately, MP3s can have their volume adjusted without re-encoding using MP3Gain, so ReplayGain tag support doesn't matter too much. And of course it lets you level out the volume of MP3s before burning them to a CD.....
Just to clarify things...
MP3Gain is one of the best normalizers and I would have recommended if you were not normalizing mp3s to burn on a CD.
All normalizers work about the same with mp3s and normalizing is 'no big deal' with mp3s
Since you wanted to burn mp3s to CDs I still recommend Mediamonkey because it is way good enough and almost idiot proof. In 8 yrs only one person has not been happy with the burn routines. To normalize you just check a check box and it is likely a far better quality burn app that what you are probably using. It has great support for burning mp3 CDs. Better than any other software I have used.
Welcome hello_hello you know what you are talking about.
