audacity and windows media player

[spongehileray]

I have a bunch of songs on my windows media player. They're also on my mp3 player (I synced the songs to my mp3 from windows media player). When I listen to my mp3, some songs are louder than others, some softer than others (w/o adjusting the volume of course). For example, most of the Elton John songs are softer than usual and the Eagles' songs are much louder. Can audacity fix this via windows media player? Or is it my mp3 player? Thanks.

[kozikowski]

Audacity can't tell other players what to do.

Some songs were recorded with the older "-17" sound standard (why all the Patsy Kline stuff is so quiet) and most of the modern stuff is recorded "as loud as you can make it."

You would think the desperation method would be to re-edit all your music in Audacity and fix the volumes, but that's not such a good idea. Audacity doesn't edit MP3. It makes its own personal copy and then makes a new MP3 when it's done. That means the new MP3 has double the honky compression sound damage that the original had.

You can partially fix that by increasing the MP3 quality, but that means you get fewer songs on your player.

Koz

[spongehileray]

Thanks.

[Gale Andrews]

Assuming you want the MP3's to sound roughly the same volume, use MP3Gain - this is a lossless process that won't make the file sound worse, and you can undo/redo the change. It is a standalone app, you don't use it with Audacity.

Gale