Albums

[wpc5416]

Hi all,

I wonder if someone might be able to help and thank you in advance for your valuable time and kind assistance.

When we buy a music CD or album, all of the tracks on that album are at the same volume, yes?

Thing is, I need to produce a sort of album with 6 tracks on it, (personal use only - it is self hypnosis tracks to be played overnight)

Problem is, not all of the tracks were recorded on the same equipment and therefore are at different volumes, to play overnight I need to be able to set the volume once and have them all play through at the same level.

Is there a way to use audacity to "level out" the volumes across all 6 tracks?

I am a complete novice, so if you could make it a step by step idiots guide without abbreviations, I would be so grateful.

Warm Regards

Trev

[DVDdoug]

When we buy a music CD or album, all of the tracks on that album are at the same volume, yes?

No! Sometimes, there are quiet songs and loud songs, and some songs have loud parts and quiet parts. Well... Most modern music is dynamically compressed-to-death to make it as in-your-face constantly-loud and "intense" as possible! (Which, IMO, tends to get rather boring and the listener can always turn-down the volume anyway.) When the album is "mastered", one of the goals is to adjust the levels so that it "sounds right" when the songs are played in order.

Is there a way to use audacity to "level out" the volumes across all 6 tracks?

Here's what I suggest -
1. use the Amplify effect to adjust the peaks on all files to 0dB (0dB is the "digital maximum"). Then listen to all of the files and if they sound equally loud, you're done!

2. If they don't sound equally loud, choose the quietest-sounding file as your reference.

3. Use Amplify again, and adjust-down the loud files (by ear) to match your reference.

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Perceived loudness depends on the average level (not the peak level) and the frequency content.

There are tools such as ReplayGain (and MP3Gain & WaveGain, etc) that automatically analyze and adjust the volume. But nothing is as good as the human ear, and for a small number of tracks it's better to do it manually. On the other hand, if you want to make all of your MP3s equally loud, you can't beat MP3Gain.

It can get very tricky if you are trying to match two different music styles, or if you are trying to match a song with fairly-constant volume to another song that starts-out very-quiet and ends very-loud... If you asked two people to adjust these files for equal loudness, you'd get two different results.

[wpc5416]

Thank you, I really appreciate your time and advice.

Kind Regards

Trev