4Oct/073
The best non-default option in iTunes
I personally hate when different mp3s play at different volumes. You have to constantly switch the audio level to compensate. Unknown to me, iTunes has an option called "Sound Check" under the Playback options in Preferences. It normalizes your songs, so that their volume remains constant during playback! It does this without changing the original mp3. So you can always switch it off.
Why is this not a default option? Who would not want this?
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November 14th, 2007 - 12:36
One reason you would want to leave it off is when you have albums that mix tracks together already…
Some tunes are quieter or louder on these albums for effect, so when they are all the same volume the sound actually becomes imbalanced… It’s OK of all the tunes in a library are disconnected, separate songs, but not OK of they are _meant_ to join like they did on the CD.
Cheers!
Aaron
November 27th, 2007 - 20:26
Is iTunes Sound Check really as unevolved as Aaron suggests? I don’t use iTunes, but instead I use a media player that supports ReplayGain, which calculates an average gain level for an entire album along with the gain level of each track. That way, when you listen to the whole album, the relative volume track to track is preserved. It seems like with all of the tagging tools in iTunes, it would be smart enough to recognize when it’s using Sound Check on a single album, too.
December 26th, 2007 - 17:11
Speaking of volume normalization, the damn *law* should require all MP3 players to have the function.