If there’s one thing I hate when listening to music on my mp3 player, it is the difference in loudness between songs. If you’ve got a very poorly ripped album, you’ve got to change the volume of songs time after time. Besides that, these differences in loudness may go unnoted leading to hearing problems. With MP3gain, this problem is history.
MP3gain is a simple tool that allows you to modify the volume of your mp3 files (read: it will only work on mp3 encoded files). It works by adding a few files to the list, and after that you can analyse these files. The analysis basically gives you the avarage volume the mp3 will produce. This is given in decibel. It is interesting to see that some tracks were over 10dB louder than others, which is (as 3dB is twice as hard) nearly 8 times louder than other one… The analysis also shows if the sound file will produce clipping. This clipping will occur when during the decoding of the mp3 by your player some of the sounds are too loud. The player will limit the maximums of these sound waves, which will lead to a scratchy rough sound. After studying this, I really noticed that you can really hear this when listening to your music.
When the analysis is done, you can decide how you want to change the volume. They recommend 89dB, but I think it’s way to soft compared to other noises that are produced by your computer. Making your files 89dB will surpress most of the clipping though. You can also change this volume in two ways. If you use track gain, it will change all the tracks to this volume, but if you use album gain, it will preserve the volume difference between the tracks on the album. This could be helpfull if you, for example, want to edit classical tracks. You don’t want the soft parts of the symphony to be as loud as the loud finale.
Next to this volume normalizing options, there is also an option to make the maximum amplitudes in the files the same. With this you can skip the analysis (as it isn’t a very slow procedure but also not a very quick one), making it a faster to procedure. The maker of this program isn’t very positive about this option as it will not guarantee mp3 music of the same volume.
The great thing about this application is that it works quite fast without a noticable loss in audio quality. At least, I couldn’t hear a difference in the audio quality after testing a modified track with the original track on my computer speakers. Besides that, the user interface is very intuitive and you can apply basic volume changes in no time. But to fully comprehend the album function and the maximize function, you need to read one or two topics in the help file, which is very comprehendable.
So say goodbye to the endless volume changing on your mp3 player (or to damaging your hearing if you don’t do this), and download this great application, as it will make your music listening experience a much more pleasent one.
Score
9/10
Screenshot
Platforms
All windows 32bit systems
Links
Project link
Download link
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