On my mac, I usually use xmms, which does support replaygain tags (as well as ogg and FLAC). WRT Oliver's concerns, iTunes is completely useless to me for a variety of reasons, so I use other things. If you're paranoid about it, that's fine, I just thought I'd throw this out there. This is why it's generally better to lower the level than to increase it. For things that are too quiet, you can have problems, since now you have to worry about clipping (as you've pointed out). Noise floor on even good recordings is usually around -70 dB anyway, so even if you lopped off 15 dB (an absurdly high value), you'd still have about 10 dB of room left, since you're truncating the bottom (where I assume you're hitting 0 dB on the peaks). The albums that need the most attenuation (which you evidently don't listen to) don't lose anything by dropping the levels. All that incurs-aside from a lower volume level-is a decrease in the theoretical dynamic range by the amount of attenuation (so if you drop the level by 10 dB, you decrease the dynamic range by 10 dB). The only messing is a digital "attenuation". if a track is just too darn quiet, i'll use a wave editing program and up the volume for it - not so high that it will compress the peaks tho. Not an issue for me - i turn off volume attenuation, eq, anything messing with the track. Home Rig (The " Tower of Power"): Lan-modded E-MU 0404 => 3-ft Dayton Glass Optical Digital Out => Lan-modded Lite DAC-AH => Cardas Neutral Reference ICs * => Melos SHA-Gold "Maestrobated" by Carlo w/ DACT CT1 10K-2 Stepped Attenuator w/ '50s "D"-Getter Holland Amperex. Maybe if there's enough demand we'll see this feature soon. Please go and use the poll, I will submit the results to Manfred Schwing in a couple of days. Knowing that there are loads of quality-conscious iTunes users here, I want to find out how many of you feel the same need as I do. I would very well go out and pay again for a new iVolume with that essential feature. My idea: I am not affiliated with Manfred, but I like iVolume, and I like the few CDs I burn to have tracks of equal volume. Solution: Manfred has next to no time at the moment, but he is planning to add a CD-burning feature to iVolume, thereby avoiding the problem with iTunes. Totally silly, and no way around it inside iTunes. So even with iVolume you'd have to use iTunes sub-par adaption again making your CDs sound bad - if you wanted equal volume. ![]() On any player that is not your Mac, the tracks would all differ in volume again. Problem: For a while now, iTunes has been ignoring the volume setting of your tracks when burning a sampler CD, using the original volume. There is a free trial, price is €7 or $9. iVolume on the contrary leaves the file untouched & just changes the volume. Highs get capped & the whole thing sounds very compressed. When you use iTunes "adapt volume" feature, the sound will be degraded a lot, as you sure have noticed. IVolume does volume adjustments at your command, and it does them quite well. If you have no idea what it is, find out here: I've been talking with Manfred Schwind who gave Mac users iVolume for iTunes.
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