MP3Gain – Free volume balancing

MP3Gain is a free volume balancing tool, used to adjust your collection of mp3s so that they all play at the same volume. No longer will you have to reach for your volume control every time a particularly loud or quiet song comes on! Your entire mp3 collection can be played at one consistent volume without adjustment.

Volume harmonisation across tracks

MP3Gain works slightly differently to other programs with similar functions because it does not simply do peak normalisation but instead uses statistical analysis to analyse how loud a song sounds to human ears. The other bonus of using MP3Gain over other similar software is that it is completely lossless, because it adjusts the mp3 file directly rather than de-coding and re-encoding it. It also supports storing analysis information transparently within the mp3 file itself, so you only ever need analyse each file once. This is a completely optional feature and can easily be turned off should it interfere with your mp3 playback.

Volume adjustment made easy

MP3Gain is a very simple and lightweight tool that is easy and fulfils its purpose. Whether you want to adjust the volume of 2 files or a whole album, there are no limits to the amount of mp3s you can adjust.

Not all CDs sound equally loud. The perceived loudness of mp3s is even more variable. Whilst different musical moods require that some tracks should sound louder than others, the loudness of a given CD has more to do with the year of issue or the whim of the producer than the intended emotional effect. If we add to this chaos the inconsistent quality of mp3 encoding, it’s no wonder that a random play through your music collection can have you leaping for the volume control every other track.

There is a remarkably simple solution to this annoyance, and that is to store the required replay gain for each track within the track. This concept is called “MetaData” – data about data. It’s already possible to store the title, artist, and CD track number within an mp3 file using the ID3 standard. The later ID3v2 standard also incorporates the ability to store a track relative volume adjustment, which can be used to “fix” quiet or loud sounding mp3s.

However, there is no consistent standard by which to define the appropriate replay gain which mp3 encoders and players agree on, and no automatic way to set the volume adjustment for each track – until now.

The Replay Gain proposal sets out a simple way of calculating and representing the ideal replay gain for every track and album.