I am currently using WinAmp 3.0 for my MP3 listening pleasures.
One problem I have experienced is that as the MP3 are off different sources (some are original tunes composed by artist online, remixes or tracks which I ripped from my own cds), and hence the volume of the songs varies from one MP3 to another. This is annoying, as I often have to raise the volume for soft, mellow classicial music pieces only to race for the volume control when the next song happens to produce a sonic boom.
Is there a tool which allows me to set all the MP3 to a consistent volume level?
Another vote for MP3Gain – I recently used it to normalize several songs for my CD-buring efforts, and while it’s a tad slow, it does a terrific job. It’s a UNIX program that’s ported to a zillion different platforms, and free to boot, so there’s no reason not to use it.
Apple’s iTunes has a “sound check” feature (which is what I believe jjimm was referring to), but that doesn’t change the MP3s themselves; it merely instructs iTunes and/or the iPod to determine the average volume of a song, then adjust the playback volume so all your stuff sounds to be about the same volume. Unfortunately, it tends to be inaccurate about 10% of the time, and the sound check adjustment doesn’t apply for burning audio CDs, hence the recommendation for MP3Gain instead.
There are a few plugins for WinAmp that will do on-the-fly normalization. TomSteady is quite good. And if you use WinAmp to write WAVs, the plugin will normalize those as well. Not real efficient, though.