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I have a playlist of bedtime songs for my daughter. Some play so loud I have to turn down the volume. Then the others play so soft I can't hear them. I have Sound Check enabled. I've tried turning it off and turning it on. How do I get songs to play back at the same level without adjusting the volume of each one manually?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.5)
Sound Check has been a long standing issue and NEVER been adequate for me. "Apple knows best" right(?), wrong! We need the ability to manually adjust the range of maximum Loud & minimum Quiet. BTW saw your message while searching to see if Apple has fixed this yet.
There are limits to how much Sound Check can attenuate a song.
For the worst offenders, you can lower the volume manually. Select a track, then Get Info on it (Command-I or right-click on it). Select the Options tab. Adjust the volume using the slider.
You can select multiple songs at once, but that might give you mixed results if each one needs a different adjustments. If the offending songs are from the same album, adjusting the songs together should work fine.
It turns out the problem was that I was using Sound Check in iTunes on my Mac, but playing it back on my iPhone, where it was disabled. Sound Check doesn't equalize your iTunes library, just your playback on that specific device.
iTunes: About Sound Check - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2425
Some takes on Sound Check and alternatives - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4997972
http://www.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/
http://www.mani.de/en/ivolume/ (commercial)
MP3Gain Express - http://projects.sappharad.com/mp3gain/ - Mac port of MP3Gain
Fission application (commercial) has normalize tool which I believe works for both mp3 and aac, saving without re-coding.
Edit: Note these tools actually re-code your files so it will apply on any device you use. You may wish to retain copies of originals.
Note also that on iDevices, you can set Maximum Volume, so it will not be exceeded even it's exceeded accidentally.
Settings > Music > Volume Limit.
Sound Check doesn't work
