From: David McIntyre <plugh_at_mudbarn.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 13:09:15 -0700

Archos volume control is really bad. It has a 2 second threshhold (perhaps
settable), so if you hit a quiet area of playback, it comes back blaring then
settles down to what seems too quiet. It's much better to normalize the levels
of a whole album at once.

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 02:56:56PM -0400, Chris Holt wrote:
> Well, the Archos does have a volume control.
>
> I really must be missing your point. The only reasons I can think of for
> concern with regards to changing the gain of an MP3 file are clipping,
> which is avoidable, and the gain of the track relative to other tracks.
>
> In a playlist of mixed songs the common use would be to make all songs
> sound approximately as loud as each other, avoiding constant volume
> control fiddling.
>
> In the scenario of playing a complete album, we would have concern about
> the relative loudness of each song the same as it was mastered. As we
> pointed out, MP3Gain can handle this.
>
> Other than that, I can't really see what you mean by "listen to the song
> in it's original volume" because taken individually, you set each songs
> volume level with the volume control.
>
> Perhaps put another way: I personally only have one album where I am
> concerned about the gain of all songs relative to each other. I
> MP3Gain'ed the album (in album mode) with a gain setting just below
> clipping. Now I know when I listen to that album, I can get the maximum
> volume out of the device that I'm using to listen, but still have the
> quieter tracks quieter. I don't see why anyone should care what the gain
> of the mastered album was, as long as all tracks are the same, relative to
> each other.
>
> The rest of my music gets MP3Gain'ed as a whole, but in track mode,
> because I want to be able to listen to music at a constant perceived
> volume across tracks. I cannot come up with any reason why I should care
> at all what the engineer set the gain levels to when he made the master.
> Unless, of course, he clipped the thing.
>
> The bigger problem is the heinous amounts of dynamic range compression
> they use to sound louder on the radio. It's pretty much impossible to get
> that back.
>
> Chris
>

-- 
David McIntyre         plugh_at_mudbarn.com        http://www.mudbarn.com
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Received on 2003-09-30