Normalizing the output on a certain channel?

piphanz · Post by **piphanz** » Sun May 21, 2006 8:03 am

Hi,

I have set up a classical music radio station in my home using an FM transmitter and an MP3 player outputting to a different Pulsar Dest than the one I usually use. It works perfectly, but some of the MP3s I am playing are at a higher volume than others, making the background music rather distracting at times.

Is there any waý to normalize this music using SFP? Or should I normalize all the MP3 files (in which case, suggestions of which software to use would be most welcome)

Thanks in advance for your help!

djmicron · Post by **djmicron** » Sun May 21, 2006 8:48 am

you can use a limiter to solve it.

Post by **garyb** » Sun May 21, 2006 1:30 pm

yes, normalize your volumes beforehand if possible. most any wave editor will work. i like magix music studio(it's cheap) the old cool edit would be great and free or wavelab or....

otherwise, a limiter can help.

voidar · Post by **voidar** » Sun May 21, 2006 1:45 pm

What radio-stations do is compress.

I think this is a loudness thing., and obviously you will have problems with varioous classical music because of the wide dynamics.

piphanz · Post by **piphanz** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:42 am

If I can compress my way out of this problem, it would be ideal. Do any of you audiohackers have a suggestion for good settings of the compressor to tame the wide dynamics of classical music?

Post by **garyb** » Mon May 22, 2006 8:50 am

got vinco? it's perfect for this. the compressors it's modeled after were for broadcast. use 2:1 and adjust threshold for more or less compression. you still may want to normalize. it will sound pretty strange if you use the compressor as a gain knob....

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon May 22, 2006 10:02 am

You also may want to check out Replay Gain, which consists of 2 mp3 v2 tags. Foobar2000 can scan your mp3 files' levels, and upon playback it can make sure all songs are perceived equally loud. One tag sets a dB value per song, the other one makes sure albums are played back equally loud. Upon playback, the player then compensates each song's volume automatically. This does not affect the mp3 encoding itself, it just adds a tag to the file...

Of course dynamic compression techniques as described in other replies can help smoothing out dynamics in a more classical way...

Enjoy

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:06 pm

wen you resave format of MP3 you degranding the audio data,try to save 3 or 4 time your mp3 and comparare with original

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: bronYaur on 2006-05-22 13:09 ]</font>

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon May 22, 2006 8:58 pm

bronYaur, Replay Gain is just a /tag/. Change the name of the file 100 times and compare sound to the original.

miguel · Post by **miguel** » Tue May 23, 2006 5:58 am

Foobar rocks for replaygain, and at least another five great features. No cpu hogging visuals or anything fancy, sorry.

It has decent resampling and dithering (in case you need it) algorithms too. Can grab tags from the internet and tag/rename your mp3's according to them and your liking. Builds searchable databases and other possibly useful stuff too.

Sorry for the shameless plug but so many people I've recommended it to ditch it for not being skinned and otherwise bloated (so many like bloatware these days). Just install the components you need and it's very sleek.

voidar · Post by **voidar** » Tue May 23, 2006 7:56 am

Another reason to compress is actually because of the limited bandwidth of FM. Some of the musical details may actually fall below the noise-floor.