For those who have a great collection of mp3 songs, did you come across instances where some songs are louder, and others are softer? I have several thousands of songs in my Music collection. When listening to the songs, the thing that disturbs me most is the adjustment of the volume. At one instance, the song is too loud for my ear and I have to turn the volume down. Then in the next instance, the song is too soft and I have to turn the volume back up. I bet you have experienced the same scenario before. How about normalizing all the songs to about the same volume so that you won’t have to play with the volume button every time?
MP3Gain is a small software that automatically adjusts your mp3s so that they all have the same volume. What makes it different from the other normalization software is that it does not just do peak normalization (the process of making all tracks equally loud). Instead, it scans your music files and perform a statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear. Best of all, the changes in the volume does not alter the quality of your mp3, that means you can listen to all your high-quality music at the volume suitable for your ear.
Download and install MP3Gain
Open MP3Gain. Click on Add Files to add your music files. If all your songs are sorted into its Album folders, click Add Folders instead.
The default target volume is 89dB, but you can change it to your preferences. If you want it to be louder, change to a higher value (say 95dB).
There are two different modes that you can use to analyze the tracks.
Track mode – MP3Gain analyzes each track’s volume and correct them to match the Target Volume. This is preferable if all your songs are of the same genre.
Album mode -Different albums have different sound settings, so it is not a good choice to normalize all songs to the same target volume. The Album mode corrects the overall volume of the album to the target volume, yet maintaining the volume differences between the mp3 in the album. This is preferable if you have various albums, all of different genre.
Click on Track Analysis (or Album Analysis). It might take some time, depending on the size of your music library. The information will then be displayed on the screen.
Click on the Track Gain (or Album Gain) to repair the tracks. Note that MP3Gain does not re-encode the music files to make the changes. It simply embed a meta-tag into the track. The music application that plays the tracks will read the meta-tag and make the adjustment accordingly.
Once the changes have been made, you can sync your music back to your MP3 player and enjoy the differences.
At any point of time, if you feel that the volume is too loud/soft, you can repeat the same process with a different value of target volume. Remember that the software does not make changes to your MP3 files, so it doesn’t matter how many times you change it.
Also, if you want to restore back to the original settings, you can go to Modify Gain -> Undo Gain Changes to restore it back.
Is this useful to you? Let’s us know in the comments.
Image credit: rt44man
Damien Oh started writing tech articles since 2007 and has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry. He is proficient in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS, and worked as a part time WordPress Developer. He is currently the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Make Tech Easier.
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