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Normalizing Your Digital Music Library

Phillip, something of an audiophile, has been testing a series of WinAmp plugins for volume normalization:

The CompWide plugin is excellent. I’ve encoded about 15gigs so far, about 3gigs of that just classical music. I’ve been playing random selections and it’s very nice to listen to, say, the Rolling Stones’ cover of “Love in Vain,” and then switch to a Beethoven piano sonata and hear both of them perfectly, including all the quiet parts of the piano piece.

This is one of those things–volume normalization of my digital music–that I know I should care about, but I haven’t quite gotten around to yet. Possibly after I build a house, and am waking up the neighbours with “99 Luft Balloons”?

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Darren Barefoot is an author, speaker and digital strategist. He’s the co-founder of Capulet Communications, and co-author of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

6 comments

  1. I’m an audio guy and I agree that it’s nice to normalize your music library. However, if you use iTunes, it has a “Sound Check” feature that does a decent job of adjusting volume for each track without having to modify the file. (Its algorithm doesn’t always gauge the volume of tracks accurately, however, so the adjustment isn’t perfect.)

    Really, though, it’s not THAT big a deal to use the volume control, is it? The CompWide plugin is actually doing a lot more than normalizing — it’s changing the stereo field and performing dynamics compression on the audio too, which I would think audiophile purists would find abhorrent, especially on classical tracks. It’s more like the iTunes “Sound Enhancer,” which I’m not all that fond of for that kind of music.

  2. Um, Darren, you should never, ever wake your neighbors up with 99 Luft Balloons. That’s a serious, morally repugnant thing to do. I mean, I’m a child of the 80’s and still bop my head when I hear the song. But, dude, don’t do it.

  3. Derek, the description was “something of an audiophile,” which could mean anything, and in my case means some guy who’s too lazy to hit the volume button or fork out thousands of dollars for a top-of-the-line stereo. I’ve tested a few Winamp normalizers, and CompWide does a decent job; I’ve configured it so it doesn’t make any drastic changes to the dynamics of the music. It’s working out well. If I was a purist, I wouldn’t be using MP3s to begin with. For the set up I have, CompWide is a definite plus. I’d recommend it for anyone using WinAmp. Cheers.

  5. I use the iTunes Sound Enhancer (and Sound Check) too (not to mention the DSP settings on my old Sony CD player), so I’m with you. I just don’t think dynamics compression and stereo widening are very good for classical music.

  6. Wow, this post is nice! I am really a music lover and will not complete my day without playing my favorite music. It helps a lot to let me focus on my job. So far, Phillip is one of my most trusted brands so I think they can really provide such music enhancer and volume normalization.

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