Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp (Read 4557 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Thread.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #1 –
Buy a larger amplifier.  (And speakers which can handle it.)

But, seriously, those are the tools for making music louder.  Those are tools for automatically controlling the volume knob so that all your music plays at the same level.

If you want to make a piece of music louder sounding you need to look into dynamic range compression.
Creature of habit.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #2 –
Nevermind, I find that using this in Mp3gain works best:

Album Analysis>Select clipping files>Right click>Apply Max no-clip gain for album

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #3 –
Normalize, and don't use MP3Gain or MP4Gain.   

ReplayGain (and related tools) is for volume matching.  Since many (or most) commercial recordings (even the quiet sounding ones) are already normalized/maximized so you can't boost (many of) the quiet sounding recordings and the only way to match volumes is to reduce the volume of the loud-sounding recordings.  People often complain that RepalyGain makes their songs quieter, but that's the only way it can work.

You can set a higher MP3Gain target volume, but if you set it to prevent clipping it won't do anything to the songs that are already maximized/normalized. 

Normalization adjusts the volume for 0dB peaks.    (0dB is the "digital maximum" for ADCs, DACs, and most audio formats.  If you try to go over 0dB, you can get clipping.)

Any audio editor can normalize.  Audacity is free, or if you have MP3s MP3DirectCut can normalize without decompressing and then going through a 2nd lossy compression step.

If that's not loud enough you can use dynamic compression.    Compression (or limiting) can be used to boost the quiet or "average volume" parts of the song without boosting/clipping the peaks.  Of course, this changes the musical dynamics and if it's overdone the music becomes constantly-loud and boring (like a lot of modern recordings.  ). 

Again, just about any audio editor has a compressor and limiter effect.  But, different compressors will sound different, there are several settings, and it takes some skill, experience, and experimentation to get the most from it.  And, different settings will be needed for each song.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #4 –
Get an amp that goes to 11.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #5 –
I've had good luck getting my mp3's volumes more compatible with each other using a combination of Mp3Gain and a plugin for Audacity called "Limiter" (last I checked it's not bundled with Audacity, but can be downloaded as a separate add-on effect).  I set the Mp3Gain target volume at 95dB with NOUNDO (don't care to use ReplayGain on mp3's), and for tracks that are louder than that, I permanently lower them right in Mp3Gain, which are generally the newer, more brickwalled releases.  Tracks that are already at their max gain without clipping but are annoyingly too soft are put through the Limiter, exported, and rechecked in Mp3Gain until they sound ok to me personally.  Depends on the song, really.  Rockin' stuff can wind up as high as 97dB, and mellow stuff down in the 93-94 dB area.  Yes it's time consuming but in the end it makes for a more pleasurable listening experience without constantly adjusting the volume, especially while shuffling tracks.    I don't use auto-normalizing stuff like Apple's Soundcheck, it's too robotic sounding, and only works on Apple devices.    Doing it this way ensures my music natively plays at the same relative volumes on any player, forever.  I only do this meddling with the mp3's, I leave the original flac's alone, BTW.   
And I agree with DVDdoug that once you start messing with a compressor/limiter, it takes skill, experience and experimentation, and different settings will be needed for each song - you can batch run a ton of songs through a compressor/limiter, but some will wind up sounding like they need "more", and others will wind up sounding like they were forced somewhere they didn't want to go.  Each song is a separate project.  It's all very personal how much disparity in volume you are willing to tolerate vs how much work you are willing to do to "fix" it.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #6 –
Quote from: trelain on
I don't use auto-normalizing stuff like Apple's Soundcheck, it's too robotic sounding


I thought Soundcheck did roughly the same thing as Replaygain, ie. calculate a gain or cut in the overall volume of a file, so the average volume level for all songs is the same? That is, a volume adjustment with no EQ or permanent changes to the files involved?

I use Replaygain for my entire library, with a +6dB boost for all Replaygained files and clipping protection enabled. That should do exactly what you're doing manually right now.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #7 –
Yes Soundcheck and ReplayGain are roughly the same thing, so they are not the exactly the same, so you have to deal with that, and hope that every player uses one of the two, and deal with the evaluator giving the same treatment to all songs relative to the reference volume.  RelayGain/Soundcheck only tell the player to increase or decrease the overall volume of the track, they can't compress the waveform, so it is not exactly the same thing I am doing manually.  I tried them and didn't care for the results, so I shut them off and manually adjusted my files and eliminated those worries, and couldn't be happier.  But by all means give them a try, and if you are still not satisfied, then permanently re-encoding the file with a compressor/limiter is a more sophisticated next step.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #8 –
But how exactly is Soundcheck or Replaygain "robotic sounding"? It literally only acts as a software volume control that you don't have to adjust yourself.

There are some shortcomings in the Replaygain algorithm, which are being addressed in the proposed version 2.0. It doesn't always make things 100% spot-on, because different recordings have different amounts of compression and different amounts of dynamic range. But it is always non-destructive and the ideal amount of gain for a given track can be updated or completely removed without touching anything but a couple of tags in the metadata. If a player doesn't support Replaygain, it will simply ignore the tags and play the file normally.

The next step is MP3Gain, which actually change the gain amount directly in the frames of the file. This does change the file, but it doesn't re-encode them, so no quality is lost. It also keeps the undo information in a tag so you can revert the file to its original state. As I have an MP3 (and MP3 only) player installed in my car, I convert my driving mix to MP3 and MP3Gain all of the tracks, so everything is about the same volume. It's slightly less precise than Replaygain, but it works with everything.

What you're doing is adding more compression on top of music that is presumably already compressed, effectively you're making a remaster from a compromised source, which is hardly ideal, especially if you're taking an MP3 file, applying limiting and compression and then re-encoding it.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #9 –
Quote
But how exactly is Soundcheck or Replaygain "robotic sounding"?
By "robotic sounding", I mean insufficient for my needs due to its limitations, as you mention here: 
Quote
It doesn't always make things 100% spot-on, because different recordings have different amounts of compression and different amounts of dynamic range.


Quote
But it is always non-destructive and the ideal amount of gain for a given track can be updated or completely removed without touching anything but a couple of tags in the metadata.
  When it comes to a lossy format like mp3, I'm not obsessed with words like "non-destructive", since by definition they are already "destroyed" compared to their lossless source.   

Quote
What you're doing is adding more compression on top of music that is presumably already compressed, effectively you're making a remaster from a compromised source, which is hardly ideal, especially if you're taking an MP3 file, applying limiting and compression and then re-encoding it.
I realize this horrifies purists, but it doesn't bother me to re-encode a 320 kbps mp3 once or twice.  I can't hear the degradation after the re-encode, and I doubt anyone else could either.  And how much compression is in the original copy is purely subjective, it's just another waveform.  It sounds better to me after the compressor/limiter on my hi-fi and in headphones, and I still have the unaltered flacs.  If it didn't sound better to my ears, I wouldn't do it.  To each his own. 
 
Quote
If a player doesn't support Replaygain, it will simply ignore the tags and play the file normally.
I have a huge issue with that, because the problem is back again. 


What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #10 –
So what you're saying is that you apply compression and limiting individually to each track until you feel the sound level is correct.

I wonder how long that would take, given a modestly-sized collection of music like mine, currently totalling some 300GB and ~15,000 files.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #11 –
Yes, but only to the ones that require it.  I like the results, so it's a labor of love    I have about 8,000 files.  Like I said, to each his own.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #12 –
If I had the proper tools and mastery in order to apply multi-band DRC to titles in my collection that had an RG correction greater than than -3 dB I might consider doing it to a few, but only if I felt otherwise driving them into clipping would be audible.

I'm mainly talking about rock/pop titles.  I wouldn't compress titles that I felt actually warranted the extra DR unless I wanted to listen to them in less than ideal environments.

EDIT: Of course this begs the question as to why I don't just crank the level.  At one point in time I didn't like the meek level of my iPod compared to my CD player.  Those days are more or less gone.  Now I guess I just feel awkward having to boost the volume when playing my music on others' systems.  Thankfully the only other source of music that attaches to the same system at home is generally streaming Spotify which uses RG.

What's the best way to get music as loud as possible without clipp

Reply #13 –
Quote from: fighuass on
Thread.


Compress the #@!! out of it using multi-band compression and then clip it quite a bit.

I think this was patented but the patent is so old that it has run out by now.

I'm sure that there are a bunch of VST plug ins for doing this that can be used under Audacity.