Is there an application that stabilizes the volume level of downloaded mp3 files?


As someone who downloads or buys their music to listen to via VLC, it's quite annoying when the volume level between files aren't consistent. Especially when I'm unable to easily to change the volume like when I'm doing physical labor as an example. So it can go from a perfectly reasonable volume, to damaging my ears, and then to where I can barely hear.
I was thinking of going in and manually editing them myself to be consistent amongst each other at some point, but then it got me thinking.
Is there an application that will equalize the volume on your audio files for you? If not, would anyone else have a use for one besides me? I'd love to know either way.
in reply to Pirate2377

If you need a GUI, Audacity is a popular audio editor that has many features, one of which is normalizing levels. If you need to automate via CLI, ffmpeg is probably the tool for the job, as others have mentioned.
in reply to Scipitie

Replaygain doesn't change the file itself.

It is a measurement of the files audio volume against a set level. Then the file gets a tag (metadata) for the volume adjustment.

To put it simply: ReplayGain turns up the volume an appropriate amount when playing a relatively quieter song/album and turns down the volume an appropriate amount when playing a relatively louder song/album.

Pretty much any music player should support replaygain including VLC.

reddit.com/r/headphones/commen…

in reply to Pirate2377

Look into audio normalisation.. for playback purposes scanning/applying Replay Gain on the files should help a bit. Most audio playback software has support for that.

There is also EBU R 128, a slightly different type of loudness normalisation, it uses a different algorithm vs traditional Replay Gain. For my own usage I found it works better keeping the loudness at the same level when playing through a bunch of different audio tracks. No idea about VLC but the Strawberry application does support it so it could be worth a look if you want to try other audio playback software.

This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Pirate2377

This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Pirate2377

Go to Preferences -> Audio -> Replay Gain mode and set it to "Album" (if you're listening to whole albums) or "Track" (if you're mixing it up). This will let VLC read the ReplayGain[1] tags in your files and adjust playback volume accordingly. Chances are high that a lot of your collection already has these tags, and you won't have to do anything else. If some of your files don't have these tags, just run a tool (github.com/complexlogic/rsgain for example) to generate them.
in reply to lost_faith

Well, I forgot to mention that I don't just use these audio files on my Linux machine. I use SyncThingy in order to use the same files on my phone as well (which runs LineageOS).
So, unless VLC for Android also has that feature, I would prefer a solution that works regardless of which platform I'm using, thus why I was looking to do re-encoding on Linux.
Though admittedly, I was also wondering if the answer was no because I thought I might have finally found a decent idea for a project
in reply to Pirate2377

Echoing another user's suggestion of using Foobar2000. You can also do it by album so the quiet parts of the album remain quiet in relation to the other parts, as they were intended to be.

Create a playlist in Foobar2000.

Add whatever folders.

Select all.

Right-click and go to replaygain

I always choose "scan as albums (by tags)"

and then when it's done scanning click the button to adjust replaygain in the metadata.

This entry was edited (19 hours ago)