The Problem
For those of you, like me, who use your Axim as an MP3 player you may have noticed that you are constantly adjusting the volume to compensate for the fact that all your music seems to be recorded at different volumes. This can be frustrating when you have a large collection of music all at wildly different volumes playing on random or shuffle.
The solution
Enter
MP3Gain. What MP3Gain does is to adjust (in a lossless and recoverable manner) a volume gain control that is integral to every frame of music in an MP3 file. The changes it does are stored in an APEv2 tag (which
shouldn't interfere with an mp3 player) so that the original volume levels can be restored if you wish, thus reverting the file back to the way it was before you made the adjustment.
The benefits of the program are two-fold. Firstly it reduces the volume levels to a point that while it is not so low as to make the files un-listenable, it is low enough that a player that fully adheres to the mp3 standard will not "clip" the audio and possibly produce clicks or pops. Secondly, and this is the major benefit, all mp3s can be given a very similar volume. The accuracy of the volume control is "only" 1.5dB which is due to the lossless way that the volume is controlled, but in general this is more than accurate enough. The volume level detection is also not done purely by peak volume, it is done using a method developed by the author of ReplayGain (
http://www.replaygain.org/) that detects the peak "audible" volume that the listener is likely to hear which means that files that have a high volume noise that is relatively inaudible due to frequency does not play as much of a role in volume correction.
Get MP3Gain from
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/download.php
I have attached a four small images showing MP3Gain and its usage.
The advice ;)
In a nutshell all you need to do is to add a directory or collection of mp3s using the program, analyse them and then apply gain. The analysis can take some time, especially with a large collection of mp3s, but only has to be done once. You never have to analyse again even when re-adjusting the gain.
I would recommend using the Album Analysis, available by the drop down arrow beside the Track Analysis button, so that it calculates the real overall gain required for an album if you later want the volumes to be consistent for track changes within an album as you get when tracks drift into each other. Then if you intend to listen to the tracks randomly select "Track Gain" and all of the tracks will be adjusted as closely as possible to the "Sweet Volume" of 89.0dB, or as closely as is possible by changing the volume in 1.5dB increments. With Track Gain if you have done an Album Analysis it will also record the required gain needed to bring the tracks back to their original relative volumes while still keeping the volume close to the target volume. One benefit of the Album Gain feature is that when doing a large collection it only considers tracks that are in the same directory to be the same album so if you have a directory structure like Artist\Album\Track then only tracks within that album directory will be used to calculate and adjust Album Gain.
Even after doing both a Track Gain and then an Album Gain you can still restore the original volumes of each track by selecting the track you wish to restore (or by using Ctrl+A in the track window) right clicking and selecting "Undo Gain Changes" as can be seen in the fourth image I've attached. All track volumes will simply be returned to original values.
I would also recommend doing this on a hard drive, as it will be a lot faster. While it does work on flash media I found out to my own detriment that it takes a lot longer, and probably causes a lot more writes to the media.
This is my first guide and I did check that no-one has released something similar, I just wanted to give something back to the community, so be gentle ;).
If you find it useful or if there are any corrections or additions I should make then please let me know.
Once again, get MP3Gain from
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/download.php