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soundcheck good or bad ? - how to improve volume levels

my music library is around 5700 tracks sourced from various places - some itunes purchases, some self-ripped, some from other *ahem* sources. so i have various different bitrates, varying volume levels etc.

to try and rectify this i enabled soundcheck and had itunes try and level the volumes. i enabled soundcheck on all my other devices (appletv, iphone, ipod etc).

i'm not too sure if it has done a good job or not, and i'm sure that some tracks still sound louder than others. i've also read some bad reviews on the soundcheck feature.

does soundcheck do a good job, and if so and i using it correctly ?
if it doesn't so a good job, are there suggestions for improving my library ?

 MBP C2D 2.4GHz  Mac Mini G4  AppleTV  iPhone 3G 16GB  iPod Classic 80GB, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 19, 2009 12:51 PM

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Posted on Feb 19, 2009 12:57 PM

I never found Soundcheck to do a very good job. Have a look at iVolume. It's a commercial product so you have to buy a license to get full use from it but trial mode will give you a chance to listen to what it can do: iVolume
9 replies

Feb 19, 2009 2:08 PM in response to Chenks

There is if it does a better job but it's up to you. iVolume also has a couple of options to "Forget Analysing Results" and "Remove iVolume Comments". However in that case the songs will probably be reversed back to the current setting that was applied by soundcheck which will have been the base that iVolume would be working to. iVolume also requires you to have soundcheck enabled and from that base it provides finer controls. So the fact that you have/had soundcheck on means that you are at no disadvantage trying it but as I said, it's up to you.

Feb 19, 2009 3:10 PM in response to Chenks

how do you undo anything that soundcheck has done?
i see that it has set volume levels to all the files.

Soundcheck does not adjust the volume level you see when you get info on a song.
When it first analyzes a song, it stores info in one of the ID3 tags (which you cannot see).
If Soundcheck is turned on, it will use that info.
If Soundcheck is turned off, the ID3 tag is ignored and it will play at the same level as you RIP'd the song with.

soundcheck good or bad ? - how to improve volume levels

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