What Target Volume Levels for Increasing Output?

[spaterik]

I'm looking at the help page for volume leveling and it explains a few things, but leaves a bunch to guessing.

What I want to do is level volume for ripping and also to get an increase in volume gain that is usable for any playback device. In other words change the file (in my case wav) so it's louder for a remote (wifi) player.

In the section called "Leveling Track Volume" of the "Volume Leveling" help page it talks about leveling tracks so they can "play back levelled on any player". In the previous section it talks about a gain coefficient. Nowhere does it explain how to set up the Tools > Options > Player > Volume Leveling page with correct dB values for desired output.

After leveling tracks during ripping or afterwards by right clicking tracks they can be changed but how do you get desired results?

After a little digging I found that 83dB is the standard, but what does that mean in terms of setting the parameters for leveling?

Also you can analyze volume for tracks, but what does that do? Right clicking a ripped track will show you leveling changes on the details tab, but what are those numbers (+/- x.x dB for track/album) and what do they tell you?

Bottom line - can I get an increase in volume for tracks I rip that can be heard on other players? If so how?

Thanks.

[rovingcowboy]

volume leveling messes with the file, anaylizing does not.

if you have a low volume file you are going to need to use a wav editor to amp up the file volume.

get audacity it will also work with mp3 and ogg formats (mp3 if you tell it where your codec is at.)

in that program you click on project and then on import audio. find the wav file.
and click okay once it is in the screen to edit. look at the left you have a slider to control the volume of the file.
and one to control which channel of sound is played louder or softer. use the volume to add .03db to the sound
and test it, if that is still not loud enough raise it even louder, you can also use the programs built in eq presets to make the song sound better, if you don't like their presets just move the control points on their preset and do that one. remember though to always undo the first adjustment if you don't like it, before you do the second one.

[spaterik]

Thanks Cowboy,

I'll try that audacity and your instructions. Appreciated. MM says something in help about gain which is misleading I think - oh well.

Other questions you didn't answer and may or may not know.

Now I'm assuming that all MM does is level, which is fine, but what what should the settings be on the Volume Leveling setup page? for file and album, etc?

Also, what does the dB info given on the 2nd tab of the file's properties mean? Where it shows a dB level for album and track?

If you know, fine if not thanks anyway. Would sure be nice to know how to level a playlist for use outside of MM. Meaning songs from different albums and genres.

Regards,

Scott

[rovingcowboy]

the db on the tab is telling you what decible amount of the song has been rasied or lowered by +- 2 or 30db's
the settings page on the options tab for volume leveling in monkey is just that what you want the monkey to level the songs at. meaning the song's volume level in the file is considered 100 db's so the option will be telling monkey to use all the volume in the song or less what ever you set that number on.
the second one is what you want the monkey to play the songs back at when he plays them
and the last one is what you want the monkey to try and burn the audio cd's songs to.

when monkey does anaylizing of the songs he does not change the code in the song file he just uses that for his own database info, some formats of songs will have that saved in the file and use it when played on other devices.

leveling the song will change the file's 100 percet db to what ever you had set in the first number on the options panel for volume leveling. so if you set that to 2db's then monkey will change the file to read 2 db's as the 100 db volume which in effect will turn the sound off.
so its best not to do the leveling unless you have a song file that has been turned up too loud in a wave editor that you did not do the editing of. but you can end up with a better control over that in the audacity program
on its options you can raise or lower the volume of the file, in mediamonkey to raise its volume which could be done if you change that first number on the leveling panel to above 100 at least thats the way it shows to work but i don't do that? i like more control then monkey gives for that.

[MMan]

Here are a couple of posts that go into a ton of detail on Leveling vs. Analyzing. If you are just trying to amp up the volume for a portable player, I would not use Leveling during the Rip (because that is a permanent change), I would Analyze after the rip and then Level "on the fly" as you sync with your player. That way the altered file will only exist on your player and you will still have the unaltered file that you ripped. Leveling "on the fly" during a sync should alter the sound for all players, not just ones that use Replay Gain. Remember that leveling/analyzing is meant to equalize the "relative" volume among all tracks, it was not necessarily designed to pump up the volume, but can be used to do that. Just be careful about going too far, because you will can cause significant clipping of the dynamic range if you try and pump it up too far.


http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... &sk=t&sd=a

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... &sk=t&sd=a

[spaterik]

Ok, Thanks Guys,

I've got them all set at 100 and I do level during the burn. Why? Because I'm copying classical music and if there's one thing that varies a bunch on some classical cd's is the leveling. This music was meant to be listened to in a concert hall with good acoustics and everyone very quiet, so even the the very subdued passages can be heard well. For listening anywhere else you need leveling, or you will constantly have your hand on the volume control.

Not a bad idea to get one exact copy though and perhaps use the leveling for the flac or other compressed version. I can't remember why I had them set at 100dB, but I guess thats why I don't notice too much difference. At that level it should just be bringing up the weak areas without diminishing volume anywhere.

I think the wav's in general are weak in volume when transferring to another player. So getting something like audacity might be good to play with. Besides wav, my wifi will take streams of mp3, but that's too lossy for me personally.

Thanks for the details.

Scott

[gds]

Ok, Thanks Guys,
I've got them all set at 100 and I do level during the burn. Why? Because I'm copying classical music and if there's one thing that varies a bunch on some classical cd's is the leveling. This music was meant to be listened to in a concert hall with good acoustics and everyone very quiet, so even the the very subdued passages can be heard well. For listening anywhere else you need leveling, or you will constantly have your hand on the volume control.
.... At that level it should just be bringing up the weak areas without diminishing volume anywhere.
Scott

I was searching for info on volume leveling wav's with MM (so far it seems that MM doesn't level wav's?) when I ran into this post and had to throw in my 2 cents.
Scott, from the statement above, I believe you want to change the dynamic range of the track, not change the volume of the track.
The dynamic range of a recording is the difference between the loudest and softest parts. Leveling affects these equally, and as such leaves the difference between them unchanged, a simple volume change that moves everything up or down in level by the same amount doesn't alter the dynamic range. You will still "constantly have your hand on the volume control" even after you have leveled the track to a different volume. Surely there is a process for decreasing the dynamic range of a track but I don't know what it would be called.

[jferraro]

Surely there is a process for decreasing the dynamic range of a track but I don't know what it would be called.

I believe that would be called "compression".

[rovingcowboy]

yes it is and audacity is free and has that as a tool to use along with lots of other nice tools.

[flipster]

I just upgraded to Gold partially to gain access to features like this.

Now ... here's the deal. I keep my MP3's on my main computer hard drive, but I play them over wireless networking via an old laptop in my stereo case upstairs.

I'm assuming the Media Monkey database kept by MM running on the laptop is on the laptop. I further assume that when MM does its analyzing of a file (I am having it do this track by track) it stores the volume adjustment information in the MM database and does not put any information in the mp3 file itself. Thus if I were to lose my database, I would lose the volume information.

I ask this because this little laptop is going to take about 4 days to go through 10,000 songs over the wireless network.

Further, if I, as I have in the past, re-arranged files via the OS and then cleared the database and rebuilt it (Add/Scan songs), that the analysis would have to be done again -- thus if I want to move songs to different directories I need to do it via MM from the laptop (and not from the computer where the songs actually reside).

Am I on track?

[Lowlander]

The values are also stored in the files. So the laptop shouldn't need to reanalyze the tracks.

Also see the following for what fields are stored in the file: http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/frame/index.html

[Teknojnky]

It's ironic that you use wave files for lossless quality, but if you want to change the volume permanently, then your wave files will no longer be lossless (when compared to the source).

It should also be noted that, classical music is one of most dynamic types of music (from lowest to loudest), and being that neither volume analysis, nor volume normalization, actually compresses the dynamic range. By increasing the volume level so you can hear the quiet parts, the louder parts are at greater risk of clipping or distorting, further ruining your 'lossless' quality.

[flipster]

Yeah, I don't want compression. I just want the loudest parts of quiet tracks to match the loudest parts of loud tracks. But I understand someone else earlier in the thread was interested in compression.

Well this is great news. I had read that some of these processes actually modified the properties of the file, but wasn't sure if that's what MediaMonkey was doing.

Cool.

[flipster]

That being said, I believe there was a compression plug-in for Winamp back in the 2.x days that compressed on the fly during playback. Anything like that for MM? Sometimes if you just want background music, compression is the way to go so that mostly quieter tracks don't get lost completely.

[Teknojnky]

analysis = modifies tags only, adding the volume coefficient (-9 db etc), but only players that can read and understand these tags can play back at the specified volume

normalization or 'level track volume' modifies the volume level of the audio itself. this obviously changes the file from the original and is not lossless, but does play back at the modified volume on any player/device.

some/most people do:
analysis on all files on library
normalization/level track volume during sync (or burn)

this leaves the original files unmodified, but provides level'd files for portable devices which don't support the replay gain tags directly.

obviously when doing this, you would never want to use the portable/burned version to replace the original unless you accept that the quality has changed from the original.