I need a normalizing plugin for Winamp. Now, I know that there are many on the winamp website, but those normalise within the song, and not just make all songs sound roughly the same volume when playing.
Let me explain.
For example, in iTunes, they play the song all the way through at first run, and record roughly the amount by which the volume of the song needs to be adjusted in order not to blow your ears off/go silent when queued after a song with a different average volume.
What winamp’s normalisers do (mostly) is adjust the volume WITHIN the song, so the quiet tinkley bits get louder, and the big fat booms get softer. This is NOT what I want. I want something that works like iTunes, but isn’t iTunes, because iTunes eays my resources like the iPod eats my soul 
Anyone?
This is called compression, and you’re right, you don’t want it, because too much of it squeezes the life (dynamic range) out of a song. You may not be as anal as I am about music, but all contemporary music (all released in the last 15 years) has been ruined by making it too hot (compressing, brick wall limiting, excessive EQing) only to have it hit the radio station for even more compression!
Sorry for the hijack, and I know this doesn’t help you much, but this is a major pet peave of mine and is the reason that I no longer listen to anything ‘new’.
Just turn up the volume…
Y’know, I tried to like it, I really did, but it tells me that 70% of my music is “clipping”.
There is a very strong chance your music actually is clipping, it can depend a lot on you program you use to rip with.
I use CDex which is pretty much the best, and its free.
That’s because it is* clipping.
Nearly everything recorded “professionally” today (and the last 15 years or more) is mixed ultra hot so that it is as “loud” or “louder” than everyone else’s out there. The accepted norm lately is better that it clip a little than not be as loud as everyone else’s stuff. They mix it and push it and compress the hell out of it until it is lifeless and that is truly sad. They even intentionally clip it a little!
I record and mix my own music and even after compressing and limiting the hell out of it (more than I would allow under any situation) it still is much quieter than most everything out there today. Compare the new music out there with the stuff from the 60’s and 70’s at the same volume in your stereo. It is unbelievable that artist’s have allowed this to happen to their collective finished products. Can they not hear it?!
I should point out that clipping in the digital sense of the word is a differant thing to clipping in the analogue format.
If you clip in analogue you are essentuially goosed, you cannot do a great deal about it, the volume information is part of the music information.
On a CD, the volume information is separate to the music information, its perfectly possible to clip by setting the volume information too high, whilst the music is still intact.
If you clip the digital way, what happens is that you tend to have a compression effect, the ratio of quieter sounds to louder ones, the dynamic range, becomes pushed into a narrower range, and as stated, this tends to make the music sound ‘flat’.
By correcting digital clipping you increase the dynamic range, the impactof say a massive cymbal crash is much more effective, as it can come right to the front of the mix.
I’ve been using a plugin called audiostocker for quite a few years now. Haven’t really found anything to replace it yet. It basically normalizes between songs on the fly. It’s mostly pretty good–doesn’t distort the sound too much, at least not noticeably even on my main stereo. Sometimes after playing a very long play list, the normalization can get a bit quiet and require restarting the program.
No idea if you can still download the free version. If you can’t find it, I’ll be happy to email a copy of it to you–it’s quite small.
I’ve been using Audiostocker, and it’s not doing good.
There is quite noticible compression, and if you turn it off, the normalisation doesn’t really work… I guess part of my problem is that my music generally isn’t too “flat” to begin with, so most on-the-fly “normalisers” screw up. iTunes pre-plays every song, so it doesn’t have that problem…