Feehan11

Okay I have no idea where to post this kind of question but here it goes.
I work at a restaurant and we play nice, calm cd's in the background to set the mood. One problem is, that some cd's are recorded differently so one song will be really quiet and the other will be really loud and obnoxious. My boss wants me to make a mix cd with all the songs at the same volume. Is there any way I can do this?

dai

if you have a creative sound card there is a setting in there to do it

Terrister

In Nero recording software there is an equalize option when you make audio cds.

koala

The setting you're looking for is 'normalize'. Create the compilation list, then enable normalize before burning. It alters the volume on all the tracks to boost the quieter sections and reduce the volume of louder sections, creating an average volume that doesn't go above a certain level. Set it to about 95% and they'll all sound roughly the same volume.

You may have to burn at a slightly lower speed to avoid buffer underrun errors, because the normalization takes place in realtime while the CD is burning.

Volt-Schwibe

if it was me, i'd get a physical peice of hardware to do this.

here is a diagram of the oldest one ever. http://freespace.virgin.net/ljmayes....mp/philips.htm

here is a much newer design, the creator claims it will respond faster. http://sound.westhost.com/project67.htm

also, if you browse the guitar shops, you will find a wide range of prebuilt units, that can easy be added inline to your system, right before the amplifier. although something like this carries a price tag of around 60-150$, most management would see the value in it due to how simple it is.

you put it in the closet with the amplifier, and never touch it again, and you can play literally any mixed cd, recorded at any levels, and the sound will always be within a few decibles of the same volume.

here is a good example of a prebuilt unit. http://www.instrumentpro.com/p-ALEML.html this one is discontinued, but it is a great example. and, this one sold for 99$, but it is a two channel, for use with stereo signals. if your system runs in mono, or could run in mono, then a single channel limiter would be perfect, and would cost closer to 25-40$

for what it's worth, i had one of these, and i used it on my tv, to keep the commercials from blaring, and to make the quiet scenes audible while preventing the next scene's explosions from killing my speakers.

they work seriously killer, and they don't require a lot of fiddling.

gord

If you have the CD's ripped onto your hard drive, you can use wavegain (http://members.home.nl/w.speek/wavegain.htm) or mp3gain (http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net)