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[PaulTMA]

I want to convert from lossless Flac files, boosting the album's overall volume to the maximum level with no clipping.  Strictly per album.  understand that Volume Level is the method of going about this.

However, my finished files are even quieter than the ones I begin with.  This seems to be the problem with every file I convert or disc I rip.

There must be some very basic error going on here.  I have a lot of old albums on Flac or CD which have very small-looking waveforms and there is definitely headroom for a bit of a boost.  I definitely don't want the waveforms getting even quieter.

I have gone to Audio Conversion Options and chosen Volume Levelling.  I have not selected Adaptive Volume as I want to preserve the original audio, just boost each album without causing it to clip, and preserve the volume changes from song to song.

Can someone point out what simple thing I'm doing wrong?  Thanks

[PaulTMA]

I realise I mean D128 rather than Realplaygain.  Not an expert here.  Would really appreciate the help.  Got a ton of older CDs and FLACs I want to make louder!

[EnglishTiger]

Paul - where are you getting the "waveform" size information from.

If it is from the MC Playerbar - Ignore it - to get it fit in the small amount of space used to display it the data is "manipulated". A better indicator is the DSP Studio Analyzer Window.

I've got loads of older CD's which I ripped to Flac files without using any modification and by using a combination of DSP's "Volume Leveling" and "Adaptive Volume" I am able to play them at a Volume Level, without any distortion, that would have my Neighbours Begging Me to turn the volume down.

[PaulTMA]

Paul - where are you getting the "waveform" size information from.

If it is from the MC Playerbar - Ignore it - to get it fit in the small amount of space used to display it the data is "manipulated". A better indicator is the DSP Studio Analyzer Window.

I've got loads of older CD's which I ripped to Flac files without using any modification and by using a combination of DSP's "Volume Leveling" and "Adaptive Volume" I am able to play them at a Volume Level, without any distortion, that would have my Neighbours Begging Me to turn the volume down.

Audacity - the above waveform is the original CD rip - there's loads of headroom across the 20 track album for something of an overall volume boost.  Just want to 'print' that to output that volume lift across the album with no changes to dynamics at all.  Want to do the same thing to many albums.

The lower one is after conversion.  It has definitely got quieter, not louder.  I want these volume lifts printed onto the new files so I can use them outside of Media Center, as loud as possible per album.  I am using the application solely for this purpose.



I'm now not noticing any volume lift whether I have Adaptive Volume on or not either.  I thought I had it working a week or so ago, perhaps some setting that I'm aware of has been reset when I ran CleanMyMac?  I don't know

[EnglishTiger]

Paul - try to convert one of the albums again but this time tell it to convert it to 48 kHz 24 bit.
Since the CD is 16 bit the additional 16 bits from your conversion are being supplied by the conversion process not the source and that could be part of the reason for the drop in volume. Oh and make sure the conversion is not applying "Normalise Volume"

[blgentry]

I think I understand your goal:

1. Take the loudest song on the album and find out how many dB it takes to max out that song's volume, without any clipping.  Just touching digital 0dbFS.  Let's call that value B .
2.  Now, apply B dB of boost to all the songs in the album.

The result is that the loudest song on the album just touches 0dbFS, but the rest of the songs have their original relative volume levels.  I.E. if song #1 is 2 dB quieter than song 3, that relationship is preserved.

Given this goal, Volume Leveling and Adaptive Volume are not the correct tools.  They are designed to play back songs so that they all sound the same.  This is very different than maximizing the amplitude of an album in the way described above.

I just did some experiments and I believe the value that can help you is "Peak Level (Sample)".  That value tells you how many dB of boost will bring the track up to 0 dBFS.  For example if you see a value of -2.4 dB in this column, it means that adding 2.4 dB of boost will max out that track. 

Unfortunately I don't know a way of doing this automatically.  But you could do something like this:

Go to a Panes type view where you can see the files in an album.
Add the [Peak Level (Sample)] column to that view.
Click on that column and choose "sort inside groups by Peak Level".
Now each album will be sorted by the peak level.  The smallest negative number is the amount to boost by.  For example if the numbers range from -2 dB to -7 dB, then you would boost by -2dB.

You could do this boost by using MC's Parametric EQ and applying "Adjust the Volume".

Doing this for 50 albums would get tedious.  If it's only a dozen or so, it probably wouldn't take that long.

I hope this helps some.
Brian.

[blgentry]

Looking through my album collection, something like 90% of them are already within 1 dB of being maxed out.  Individual songs in an album can be much lower; like maybe 7 dB.  But the album itself is within 1 dB of max for the loudest song.

The other 10% are mostly within 2dB.  There are a few albums I have that are -3.4, -3.2, -3.6 dB.  So not quite maxed out, but also not very low compared to max.

I don't know what your intention with this is, but I suspect that a different solution might achieve what you are after, as I can't imagine that very many of your albums are more than 3 dB "too low".

Take care,
Brian.

[PaulTMA]

Looking through my album collection, something like 90% of them are already within 1 dB of being maxed out.  Individual songs in an album can be much lower; like maybe 7 dB.  But the album itself is within 1 dB of max for the loudest song.

The other 10% are mostly within 2dB.  There are a few albums I have that are -3.4, -3.2, -3.6 dB.  So not quite maxed out, but also not very low compared to max.

I don't know what your intention with this is, but I suspect that a different solution might achieve what you are after, as I can't imagine that very many of your albums are more than 3 dB "too low".

Take care,
Brian.

I will look into this, thanks.  Usually, it won't matter but it's because I have a lot of older CDs which are very quiet indeed.  Would be great to preserve their dynamic range but have those boosted so I can use the same stash for DJing etc - a few times if I was DJing with, say, an 80s Prince album that has not been remastered (most of them), then I've struggled a bit with my meager iPad setup to get them to compete even with that app's 'sound check' app on the go.  Elsewhere many CDs/rips I have sound great and are the best masterings to my ears, just frustratingly too low in level.

[blgentry]

I'll await the results of your testing/examination.

But I have a prediction:  These older recordings simply have good dynamic range and a low average playback level, compared to today's horribly (dynamic range) compressed recordings that all sound like they are on 11 all the time.

I would recommend a mixing board of some sort so you can vary the level more easily.  Or perhaps some more mature DJ software that enforces replay gain and makes everything closer in volume level.   A modern DJ controller like the Numark DDJ-SB3 will come with a functional version of Serrato, which can do a lot; including volume leveling in a sane way, and give you the ability to boost a track quite a bit.

Again, best of luck with your endeavors.

Brian.

[johnkaess]

For many years now, I've used DBPowerAmp's Volume Normalize DSP and selected the EBU r128 track gain option whenever i rip a CD or purchase a digital file. It has eliminated the need to keep turning the volume up and down when listening to music on shuffle. I listen to my music mostly on shuffle with playlists I've set up in JRiver. It permanently adjusts the file to the correct level to get max volume without clipping or compressing. It's permanent. I've never regretted doing this and i have more than 21,000 tracks in my collection.