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Koffee Bean
March 4th, 2003, 06:48 AM
In my neverending quest to take my mp3's and make them my own I have discovered two of THE most essential programs out there for your mp3's. The first one of these little app's is called <MP3Gain> and the second is <MP3Trim>

MP3Gain:

Okay, say you just downloaded this really rare song, but to your surprise it's way to soft! Even with the speakers turned on at full blast it's only barely audible, what do you do? You can't go download it again due to it's immense rarity and it's was a struck of luck that let you find it in the first place. All hope is gone right? WRONG! MP3Gain takes all your mp3's and can "normalize" then to the set dB level. To normalize all your tracks you just simply

1. Open MP3Gain and click the Add File(s) button to (ironically enough) add the files you want.

2. Set your Target Volume in decibels (dB) in the Target "Normal" Volume field. You can also choose to leave the level at the default 89 dB setting but I think this is way to low, I recommend going with either 96-98 dB's.

3. Click the Track Analysis button. MP3Gain will analyze the files to report the current volume level and the change required to meet the desired dB level.

4. Click the Track Gain button to normalize all the desired tracks to the set dB level.

5. Listen to the mp3's, if they sound too loud lower the set dB level and renormalize them, or if they are too quiet raise the dB level once more.

MP3Gain (http://www.geocities.com/mp3gain/)

MP3Trim:

Alright say you just downloaded your most favoritest song in the world, but there's 4 seconds of silence at the start of it before playing and over 40 seconds of silence at the end, what do you do? Just use MP3Trim to remove the unwanted silence.

1. Open MP3Trim and locate the file you want to trim via the Open option.

2. After opening the file, MP3Trim will sometimes (not always) be able to detect the silence in the mp3. If it doesn't detect it or if it doesn't detect enough simply chose the "Time" tab and chose the desired amount of time to crop.

3. One of the nicer features is that not only can you crop by time, but also by frame. So if the mp3 doesn't start until 0:053 seconds then just hit 5 on the time tab, and then scouch over to the Frame tab and continue until the mp3 starts where you want it to.

Also, if an MP3 stops suddenly, MP3Trim can fade out the track so it sounds normal. Oh, and on a sidenote, MP3Trim also has a volume normalizer built in, but I prefer the one in MP3Gain because it gives you more control.

MP3Trim (http://www.logiccell.com/~mp3trim/)

grab_grab_the_haddock
March 4th, 2003, 08:55 AM
the trouble with mp3 gain and other programs which normalize your sound files is that very often the increase in volume comes at the price of a decrease in sound quality.

try getting all your rips at the same bit rate, and preferably ripped using the same encoder then the problem wont be nearly so bad.

KurtCocain
March 4th, 2003, 12:05 PM
No offense but those are old ass proggies. most of the people have "discovered" them.

Koffee Bean
March 5th, 2003, 04:30 PM
Originally posted by Kurt35199
No offense but those are old ass proggies. most of the people have "discovered" them.

Well now the people that don't know about them now do : )

wyoung76
March 5th, 2003, 05:00 PM
Originally posted by grab_grab_the_haddock
the trouble with mp3 gain and other programs which normalize your sound files is that very often the increase in volume comes at the price of a decrease in sound quality.

try getting all your rips at the same bit rate, and preferably ripped using the same encoder then the problem wont be nearly so bad.

If I understand what you're implying then this is misleading and inaccurate since MP3Gain doesn't transcode the mp3s, nor does it do a blanket normalisation. It just adjusts the internal "volume" bit already in the encoding. This means that the mp3 never changes in quality, but has a different overall volume