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iTunes question


Brandon Burke

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a friend of mine told me that a mix i made her plays quieter than her other CDs. this was confirmed when another mix i made for someone went on at a party last weekend and was definitely quieter then whatever was on prior.

is there a gain control for burning CDs in iTunes? i looked everywhere but couldn't find anything.

thanks folks,

Brandon

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a friend of mine told me that a mix i made her plays quieter than her other CDs. this was confirmed when another mix i made for someone went on at a party last weekend and was definitely quieter then whatever was on prior.

is there a gain control for burning CDs in iTunes? i looked everywhere but couldn't find anything.

Hi Brandon. There's a couple of things you can check on...

in iTunes Preferences, you can go to Advanced/Burning and under Audio CD

check to see if Use Sound Check is checked.

This is supposed to make all of the songs play at the same volume level,

but I'm not sure what volume level that is - :lol:

in the Preferences under Playback you can put a check in the Sound Check there too.

I use the Sound Enhancer function too (just above the Sound Check),

but all of this is, of course, relative to your ears.

If all of this doesn't make it loud enough for you,

then you can always crank it up in your playlists

by highlighting your songs (or the whole playlist)

and pressing Command - i on your keyboard

to open the info window and adjusting the volume there.

hope this helps,

Rod

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yeah, the 'sound check' function is supposed to act as some kind of automatic mastering mechanism...but really only does so much.

as we all know, if there's a loud pop on something (a LP burn, for example), that *pop* becomes the loudest peak on that particular file. consequently, you never get a true median level to be compared with the others in your library. that i understand. one hopes that leaving it on wouldn't bring your entire output level down wholesale though, y'know...

the 'sound enhancer' fucntion is still something of a mystery to me. mostly because i never looked up what it meant. (my fault.)

i'll try posting on some geeky Apple boards to see what others say. will report back here with whatever i find out...

thanks guys,

Brandon

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Yes, the loud *pop* becoming the loudest is what happens when

you try to normalize the audio,

but this doesn't seem to be what the sound check

function does. It works more like a RMS power function that

consistently raises the overall audio sound - different than normalization.

I notice major differences with sound check especially during

rodcasts of older less well recorded stuff (or non-pop recordings that

don't boost everything up to the sky).

Sound Enhancer seems to just give your treble and bass a boost -

kinda like the loudness switch on your stereo.

R~

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man i'd love to know the solution to this as it is truly the missing feature in iTunes.

in iTunes Preferences, you can go to Advanced/Burning and under Audio CDcheck to see if Use Sound Check is checked.

This is supposed to make all of the songs play at the same volume level,

but I'm not sure what volume level that is - :lol:

in the Preferences under Playback you can put a check in the Sound Check there too.

Rod

i've had the same issues with burning out mixes of stuff from various sources - ie: mp3s, mpeg4, aac etc and aiffs when tossed all together in a salad of varied source files. sometimes you bump the cuts up against another source and the levels of the burnt product are quite varied that it is almost worth winging the disc out the window.

the "Sound Check" however and unfortunately does nothing to the file. i don't think it can! it only checks the sound to an averaged level when playing out of the Mac or onto an iPod. it does not impart that sound to the file that is copied to a cdr.

the only way i think it can be done is burning a playlist to cdr and then converting it all to a wav file on the way back in via importing again and then through some other software you can level all from there.

i don't think Mac will ever allow such a feature within their OS cause it's all about selling widgets now rather than a fully featured product. ie: "gee this sound from the nano is much more enjoyable in it's compressed to hell state that i think that valentine's day cd mix you laboriously made from all them RVG, TOCJ, JVCK2, SACD and MFSL cuts sux big time!"

edit to say this is only layman rationalization... i just wish there were a big knob w/ a nice old VU meter on the machine!

Edited by Man with the Golden Arm
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Yes, the loud *pop* becoming the loudest is what happens when

you try to normalize the audio,

but this doesn't seem to be what the sound check

function does.

okay, it seems i was confusing sound check with normalization. on the other hand, when you say that the sound check fucntion is "supposed to make all of the songs play at the same volume level," isn't that sorta what normalization is for..?

just want to make sure i'm understanding you correctly...

thanks again,

Brandon

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okay, it seems i was confusing sound check with normalization. on the other hand, when you say that the sound check fucntion is "supposed to make all of the songs play at the same volume level," isn't that sorta what normalization is for..?

just want to make sure i'm understanding you correctly...

It could be that the sound check function works a bit like ReplayGain, which means it uses some RMS related calculation rather than normalization, like rostasi said. The information is stored the file header and does not alter the actual data, it's just affecting playback.

A quick Google search for RMS didn't come up with anything more meaty, but a short and not too deep explanation of Root Mean Square can be found at the RaplayGain site:

http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/calculating_rg.html

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i've had the same issues with burning out mixes of stuff from various sources - ie: mp3s, mpeg4, aac etc and aiffs when tossed all together in a salad of varied source files. sometimes you bump the cuts up against another source and the levels of the burnt product are quite varied that it is almost worth winging the disc out the window.

Yeah, all this can be a real bugger, but there are certain complexities involving these various file formats

(just the nature of how mp3 files are structured are enuf to cause audio fits).

If you're burning a bunch of different file formats, then

you need to, as you said, convert all to one, preferably uncompressed, format, then go from there.

If you really want to give it proper attention, then you can dump 'em all into something like Jam 6

and begin adjusting your own levels.

BUT i'm hearing "I don't want to do all that" which, of course, you don't,

so it's best to use like files.

The sound check function under the Playback heading is just that -

for playback...there's another one at Advanced/Burning in your Prefs - that's

the one that controls what's burned on to your disc.

The differences (in a very tiny nutshell): Normalization finds the loudest part in a song

and keeps it's relationship to the other sounds the same -

so you are correct when you say that if you have a vinyl *pop* happen,

then that could be heard (by the software) as the loudest and

everything else is quieter in relation...

but, Sound Check appears to use Root Mean Square calculation

(at least, that's what my ears hear).

Let's say that you want all of your song to sound at a hypothetical 90% loudness

(where 100% is just running into the red),

the algorithm makes it so that the loud segments

(not just one loud sound) are playing back at 90%

and the not so loud bits are a just a bit lower - say at 75% - and the quietest sections

are even lower still - all done thru mathematics. A bit simplified, but this is basically it.

This is what I meant when I said earlier that I don't know what that volume level is

when it comes to the burning version of Sound Check.

It may be really low. I haven't tested it, because I don't have that prob

when burning discs for listening and for professional use, I use something else entirely.

hope that helps,

Rod

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RMS looks like a different way of saying compression.

Or am I wrong?

You're just about right...there's some diff,

but I'm trying to figure out a way to distinguish them both... :P

RMS is calculated by using small slices and determining what properties the slices have

(I'm trying to think of a good pound cake analogy) :lol:

while compression gives the appearance of loudness by it's relation

to non-peaking sounds. Actually, compression uses RMS to increase this

perceived loudness, but it's used in a much broader way.

hmmm...I'll have to think of a better way of explaining...

Anyone good with pound cake :lol:

Rod

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the RMS v normalization thing makes sense. no prob there.

should mention that, before i started this reply, i was capturing open reel feeds in WaveLab; so i'm no stranger to these concepts. when it comes to iTunes, however, i tend to get their proprietary (i.e made up) half-assed plug-ins confused. seems that, in an attempt to keep things "simple", iTunes designers avoided the very terminology that would have otherwise explained what those fuctions are meant to accomplish.

simple indeed...

anyway, i'll try messing with sound check in the burning preferences to see what happens. if that doesn't work, i'll prob just cave in and get Toast w/ Jam. (i'm possibly expecting a little too much from our friend, iTunes, anyway...)

thanks,

Brandon

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anyway, i'll try messing with sound check in the burning preferences to see what happens. if that doesn't work, i'll prob just cave in and get Toast w/ Jam. (i'm possibly expecting a little too much from our friend, iTunes, anyway...)
Yeah, well there's a certain amount of 'dumbing down' that's a given with Apple,

but that's because the jargon just gets in the way sometimes for newbies.

The idea is to give just enuf info to get newbies interested and,

I think, they can move on from there - to Toast w/Jam or Logic, etc...if they want to learn more.

Good luck Brandon!

Rod

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