Question about WAV.files

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Hi,

I am an huge CD collector and have many thousand of files ripped to wav.files and I stream them via a Bluenode streamer to an Lyngdorf amp and use the Lyngdorfs dac. With this setup I can’t use any normalizing that the Bluenode offers. So I want to “normalize” those tracks that are very low in volume when making a playlist.
I found and tried Audacity but can’t figure out how to save the file to the Wav. format as it is saved as a kind of audacity file that I can’t even play on my VCL player on my computer.
If anyone coul’d help me out how to do this I will be very grateful.

RamblinMan

2

Rather than Save - which you only do with an Audacity project file - you do Export if you want a WAV file. I’d be very interested to know some details of your process for ripping the CDs to WAV in the first place, if you wouldn’t mind sharing.
Mark B

3

It’s File → Export to create a WAV or other regular audio file. :wink: File-Save is for creating Audacity projects (optional).

Hang-on because this gets a little tricky…

Usually the best solution is ReplayGain and a player application that supports ReplayGain. Or Sound Check with Apple applications.

Or there are WAVEgain and MP3Gain. These make “permanent” changes to the files (like what you’re contemplating) so they don’t rely on the particular player software.

All of the popular streaming services use something similar.

There are two kinds of normalizing. Regular normalization is peak normalization. It adjusts the volume for “maximized” 0dB (or near 0dB) peaks.

BUT… The peaks don’t correlate well with perceived loudness. And many quiet-sounding songs are already peak normalized so they can’t be boosted without clipping (distortion).

That means you need to LOWER the volume of the loud tracks (in fact, most tracks) in order to match the volumes without clipping. All of these loudness matching tools use a loudness target that tends to lower most tracks.

Audacity has regular Normalization and Loudness Normalization. But unlike the above tools, Audacity’s Loudness Normalization doesn’t check for clipping so you have to choose your loudness target carefully and then “manually” check for clipping and re-adjust (regular Normalize) if necessary.

and have many thousand of files ripped to wav files

FYI - FLAC is lossless compression and tagging/metadata is better-standardized and better-supported than WAV. Plus your files will be about half the size. You might want to consider it…

Ther are converters that can convert a folder-full of files. I use Kabuu Audio Converter when I want to convert without editing.

And speaking of metadata… Unfortunately Audacity doesn’t support embedded album artwork. So if you have album art and you edit the file in Audacity, you’ll need to copy the artwork into the new -edited file. (I use MP3Tag for tagging. It’s works on all of the popular formats, not just MP3).

4

I don’t mind telling you. I started out many years ago with EAC and had a computer and a DAC hooked up to my HiFi amp. When I bought my Blunode I had to migrate my music and found that DB Poweramp did the ripping job the way I wanted it to be. In both cases there is an option to “normalize” the tracks but
as it is in a sidecar to the files I can’t use it on my Lyngdorf amp. unless I use the DAC. from the Bluenode
and then it will be digital to analouge to digital again.

Every track I rip I type info manual like this example:

  1. Don’t Let Me Down - The Beatles - Apple 1970
  2. Symphathy For The Devil - The Rolling Stones - Decca 1968

To make it even more crazy, I do scan every cover front and back by myself to get the proper size and good quality. It is kind of time consuming but very fun.
As I have a lot of various genre and my collection spans from 1950 - 2025 there is of course a lot of differences in both sound and volume. Thats why I want to even out the volume when making a playlist.
And for secureity I do back up my files using three different HDD’s.

5

That’s similar to what I do now. I use EAC or fre:ac for ripping but I’m not an audiophile so I use MP3s to listen to. I have a very old laptop running Daphile connected to a Behringer DAC/ADC to my hifi amp. I also have a server running Navidrome on Linux. I was using Subsonic but it just stopped working. There is also a Raspberry Pi running Moode Audio with a DAC HAT attached. I do like tinkering and I especially like FREE software. Likewise umpteen copies of everything - too much work to do again.
Thanks for sharing.
Mark B
P.S. - were you born a Ramblin’ Man? :wink:

6

I’m aware of the replaygain feature but as I mentioned above my setup doesn’t support replaygain.
The way I wanted to use the volumenizer is to just make a copy of the tracks I want to use for the playlist and make them play at same level. I’m not going to alter my whole collection of 73000 tracks.
Just pick songs I like to do for a playlist of like 60’ssoul or 70’s popmusic or a mix of country, I think you get the idea.
When I started out this project ripping and streaming I decided to rip to Wav.files and then I can transfer copies of my files to whatever format I want. But as I type every info I want and need I never
had a reason to use another format as Wav. files works perfect. The price for a 4 TB HDD is nowadays
not very costly so I hang on to wav. files. I will try out the info you have giving me and see if it is useful for me, otherwise I will consider to match tracks with the same volume level to make a playlist.

P.S. Yepp I was born a Ramlin’ Man, the Almans wrote a song about me :wink:

7

Try WaveGain. You can find it on RAREWARES.org. It can batch process.

8

You passed! The other day someone called Fernando posted a question. I was going to ask him if he could ‘hear the drums’ but I resisted. When I saw your handle my resistance was futile. :rofl:

9

The potential problem is that since volume matching lowers the volume of many/most songs it could make things WORSE when mixing-and-matching with the untouched tracks. :frowning:

…You might want to keep an archive of original untouched files.