I’m preparing a mix CD for my sister. I’ve picked out the songs, gone out and bought copies online of stuff that wasn’t in my collection, put them all into a playlist, and am getting ready to burn the playlist onto a CD.
Only problem is, one song I’m particularly fond of plays at a much lower volume than the rest of the tracks do. If I were doing this same thing 30 years ago, I’d be taping from LPs onto a cassette, and I’d just adjust the recording volume for that track.
You’d think that same facility would be available in our wonderful high-tech age, but if there’s a way to do that using Windows Media Player, I sure don’t see it.
So the question is: is there a way to up the volume for this one track (a) in Windows Media Player 10, or (b) in some other (preferably free) software that I can use to burn a CD?
GoldWave will do it. It’s uncrippled shareware. So will Zortam, which is freeware, though I’ve never tried it.
If you want to go with the smallest possible program, you can also give normalize.exe (freeware) a shot if you’re not afraid of the command line.
Newer versions of Nero also support normalization of audio files, and, really, any audio editor will do it.
I’m not aware of any freeware program that normalizes audio files and burns them onto CD, but there might be one out there somewhere. Otherwise, your best bet is to just use one of the aforementioned programs to change the volume and then load the file into WMP for burning.
If you use Nero to burn, it has a number of filters you can apply to audio tracks, including “Normalize” which will more or less equalize the volume of each track to a uniform level.
Musicmatch JukeBox Plus offers exactly this functionality (at least version 9.00 does). Once you have compiled a playlist, you can run an optional feature called ‘Prepare tracks for volume levelling’ that will do whatever is necessary to achieve a uniform volume (boost some, diminish others). I was sceptical about how well this would work, but I can say that in my experience to date it seems to works spectacularly well.
One thing about the too-quiet song that I didn’t mention, because I didn’t realize it was relevant: it’s a track I bought from Wal-Mart, so it’s copy-protected. I’ve got the right to make a certain number of copies (can burn the track to disk 10 times, and can save it on 3 different computers), and I haven’t made any copies yet, so legally there’s no problem.
But it means that Goldwave and Audacity won’t even open the track, because it’s copy-protected, and Zortam doesn’t recognize its existence.
All I want to do is jack up the volume a little bit. You wouldn’t think that would get me into copyright-land. But apparently it has.
Agreed that it’s sad that that copy-protection tends to foil honest consumers, while more computer-savvy people who have illegally obtained the music simply chuckle while they easily break the protection.
I’m not familiar with the way Wal-Mart’s DRM works or if there’s a program to defeat it (probably), but finding and linking to one would violate the DMCA, and bring the wrath of the mods down upon me.
One presumably legal way you could accomplish your task (if you don’t mind wasting a $0.20 CD-R) is to burn the file in question to a normal audio CD, then use the freeware Exact Audio Copy program to copy the song to your hard drive as a regular WAV file.
Once you’ve done that, you should have no problems editing the song in any of the programs previously mentioned in this thread.
RTFirefly’s file is DRMed, Mangetout. That’s why I offered the alternate suggestion. Most of the previously listed programs will handle a non-DRM MP3 just fine.
Windows Media Player (and iTunes) both have volume leveling options in their “rip” sections. iTunes lets you adjust the volume leveling for every song in your album. Do a little more snooping in the “options” menu and you’ll see it.
I don’t use Windows Media Player, but that sounds like it’s going to affect the volume level of tracks extracted from CDs, rather than the tracks written to them.
