toggle

AAPL Stock: 439.66 ( -3.27 )

MacNN News

http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/05/07/itunes.volume/

iTunes volume adjustments and burned CDs

updated 08:30 am EDT, Mon May 7, 2001

", 0, 0);

Derek Wong notes that volume adjustments made to individuals tracks with iTunes do not carry over to burned CDs. "I tried to balance the relative volume of the tracks [with iTunes] but kept getting unsatisfactory results. Finally, I opened up the audio files in the resulting discs burned using different volume settings in SoundEdit. To my surprise the resulting files' wave amplitudes are identical."

by MacNN Staff

Post tools:

TAGS :

industry

toggle

Comments

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 09:16am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Makes sense.

This makes sense and is actually how it should be. iTunes is not an editing tool. It is a playback tool. When writing to disk the goal is to replicate the original as accurately as possible. Giving the user the ability to modify the file creates a derivative, not a copy.

If the sound levels are "wrong" in a file that is ripped with iTunes, then something is wrong with iTunes. The user shouldn't have to make corrections to rebalance.

If adjustments are desired for other reasons though, using a specialized sound-editing app is the appropriate route.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 09:39am | report spam | close Reply | delete
SoundEdit

Right.. and if you have SoundEdit, that's what you should use. Look for the "Normalize" function. It finds the peak in your audio for each song, and linearly brings everything up so you get the maximum level possible without compression for each song.

//Reid

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 09:43am | report spam | close Reply | delete
iTunes

I too expected the volume adjustments to carry over to the burned CD. Some albums are simply not as loud as other albums - see Prince's Sign O the Times for an album that is too quiet, so when you put together songs from different albums, it's not always a RIPing issue that makes the volume wrong. If you have to adjust relative volumes to play them in iTunes, it's a reasonalbe assumtion that the same adjustment is needed if you burn them back to CD.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:06am | report spam | close Reply | delete
time edits carry over

I was pleased to find that edits made to the starting point of a song did carry over to a burned cd IF they were burned with itunes.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:06am | report spam | close Reply | delete
iTunes

Remember we're dealing with digital data, not analog music. Ripping music from a CD should yield an exact duplicate of the original, just like copying a Word file. And if a song is too quiet, it will stay that way after having been ripped, mixed and burned. Which is a good thing, because it's real easy to ruin a song by raising the volume.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:08am | report spam | close Reply | delete
strange, but

I get inexact duplicates at the 160 bit sampling. And sometimes even at 192 bit sampling. I get static between tracks at times. Then again, that may be an artifact of how a 20x drive reads a music CD.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:09am | report spam | close Reply | delete
This

is totally g**.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:13am | report spam | close Reply | delete
No, it's because

If you're encoding your music into MP3 format, it's not an exact copy anyway. Only the original AIFF files (which are about 10x bigger than MP3s) have the exact same quality as what's on your CD.

So, at 160kbps and even 192kbps you're doing massive compression, and should expect the quality to be perceptably less.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:17am | report spam | close Reply | delete
All your 'this

is totally g**' are belong to us, bucko.

Leave your dumbass comments at home, cats. If you don't like it, then don't read it.

Make Your Time

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:18am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Bottom Line

Edit or normalise your AIFF files in a SOUND EDITING program, such as SoundEdit or Sound Studio or Peak or whatever.

THEN import into iTunes and burn away.

Note: Adaptec Jam allows you to "normalise" an entire discs worth of tunes at a time. Again we're seeing that the free app only goes so far -- a commercial app goes farther. Not very surprising, really ...

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:57am | report spam | close Reply | delete
All your

homophobes are belong to us. And we're going eradicate each and every sick prejudice fsck from the face of this planet. (I wish!)

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:58am | report spam | close Reply | delete
MP3 static

If you're doing it right, you should not get static as a result of the encoding process. The previous poster's comment about perceptible degradation is off target -- at 192k/s you should not be able to tell much of a difference. If you could, there would be no Rios players, Napster, RIAA lawsuits, etc.

Is your static in the MP3s on your hard disk? The only time I've had static issues with CD burning was when I had dust contamination in the burner. Air dusted and cleaned the head, and the problem went away.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 11:12am | report spam | close Reply | delete
This is NEWS?

MacNN is reporting this like it's some big earthshattering bug in iTunes, which it clearly is not.

Hey ... guess what ... I tried to play a Windows AVI video in QuickTime and it DIDN'T WORK! Stop the presses!! WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 11:57am | report spam | close Reply | delete
NO NO NO!!

1. According to the iTunes announcment _I_ was paying attention to, the volume adjustments SHOULD carry over to a burnt CD. This is obviously a bug and I hope the original chap reported it to Apple via the Feedback page. The track stat and stop times should also carry over to the disc as well. Any word on if this works or not? I'm not gonna scortch a disc to find out. :)

2. Expecting my 60 year old grandmother to open an AIFF in SoundEdit to make it sound as loud as her other MP3's when burning a mix of classical music is totally unreasonable. See point #1.

2. The crackling of tracks in iTunes is something my ears have noticed as well (actually, I'm embarrassed to say that drummer picked it out on a pair of decent studio monitors long before I heard it on my c***-o-rama special speakers here.. since upgrading to better speakers, the light crackle of iTunes encoded MP3's is loud and clear). This shouldn't happen. If I encode the SAME tune in iTunes and Media Cleaner Pro, both with the same settings, Media Clear is just as fast at the encoding and lacks the crackle. Another bug.

Spanks all.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 01:21pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Overboard

You know.. I really think that the majority of you people are expecting way too much from a "free" application. iTunes does exactly what it is intended to do.. make it EASY for a novice computer user to create MP3 files from their CD collection. That's it. The application is not meant to be used to make PERFECT copies of CD's.. it's meant to make a decent copy. So what if there is a bit of crackling or whatever... it's FREE.

I don't have any problems with any of the congs that I have encoded... of course I'm not expecting professional level quality form a free application either.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 01:33pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Folks, listen up

The adjustments in volume you make on an MP3 are actually tagged data. It does not change the ACTUAL loudness of the file, just tells the player to boost the volume. Therefore when burning it, only the original sound data is used.
Now, as for using Normalize, it simply does NOT help that much.
I use Adaptec's Jam for burning custom mix CDs from AIFF sources. It has a function that will normalize over the loudness of every track. Normalize adjusts based on the peak amplitude, NOT the actual loudness of the track. The only way to do that is to listen to every track and adjust them manually.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 01:47pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
It's an ID3 Tag feature

To all those who suggested using a more sophisticated sound editing app to normalize before encoding to mp3. I'd love to do that. That way I wouldn't have to adjust the relative volume of very quiet or very loud tracks by hand or with a tool like MP3 Rage. But do you realize how much more work this would be if you intend to rip your entire CD collection? And how much HD space you'd need in order to import every CD track as aiff first, then normalize it, save it and finally encode it? And this is exactly why the developer of ID3 Tag version 2.2 and up implemented this feature (Relative Volume Adjustment). That way, you can rip your CD and change the volume if neccessary later and save it in the mp3 file. That's right, stuff like that is supposed to be saved in the mp3 file. iTunes is the only player I've used so far that saves volume settings in the iTunes Music Library. So when you decide to listen to your mp3 files with another player you lose all the volume settings and have to do it all over again. This is clearly the wrong way to do it and it should be changed in future versions of iTunes. Better yet, Apple should implement a 'normalize before encode' feature so we wouldn't have to adjust relative volumes in the first place.

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 02:01pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
What tool

would work best if a person just wanted to level the volume of the tracks from different sources?

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 03:55pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Output levels

Don't be so surprised. Pick up Jam if you burn CDs alot from multiple sources and volume balance is important (which it always is).

0

Joined:

0

05/07, 10:33pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
WYH is not WYG

I agree with the complaints (assuming it's true). It's not a question of original versus modified sound data; obviously iTunes is fully capable of dynamically decompressing an MP3 and applying the volume changes in real-time when it plays back the playlist.

What we really have here is a user-experience problem: when you press play in iTunes, what you hear should be as close as possible to what you get then you burn to disc. Shouldn't we expect this basic *intuitive* functionality from Apple?

And yes, I agree that Jam's normalise yields severely suboptimal results. Since a user usually goes through a playlist at least once, chances are the music is already normalised to satisfactory levels (if one cares about such things). It's only natural to want iTunes to use these levels when burning.

Show More Comments

Login Here

toggle

Network Headlines

05/21	Poser, 10, Poser Pro 2014 get subdivision...
05/21	Apple shares executives' opening statements...
05/21	iOS 7 to get Flickr, Vimeo integration...
05/21	Cook pushes for US IP law changes during...
05/21	Cook: US-made Mac will be assembled...

Show All

05/21	iOS 7 to get Flickr, Vimeo integration...
05/21	Cook pushes for US IP law changes during...
05/21	Broadcom 802.11ac chipset spotted,...
05/21	Did Google tease Android �Key Lime...
05/21	Galaxy S4 stock Android �Google Edition...

Show All

toggle

iTunes volume adjustments and burned CDs

updated 08:30 am EDT, Mon May 7, 2001

Makes sense.

SoundEdit

iTunes

time edits carry over

iTunes

strange, but

This

No, it's because

All your 'this

Bottom Line

All your

MP3 static

This is NEWS?

NO NO NO!!

Overboard

Folks, listen up

It's an ID3 Tag feature

What tool

Output levels

WYH is not WYG

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

Most Read

10 Most Discussed

MacNN Marketplace

iTunes volume adjustments and burned CDs

updated 08:30 am EDT, Mon May 7, 2001

Related Articles

Recent Articles

Makes sense.

SoundEdit

iTunes

time edits carry over

iTunes

strange, but

This

No, it's because

All your 'this

Bottom Line

All your

MP3 static

This is NEWS?

NO NO NO!!

Overboard

Folks, listen up

It's an ID3 Tag feature

What tool

Output levels

WYH is not WYG

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

Most Read

10 Most Discussed

MacNN Marketplace