normalize mp3- command line

[ziv_r]

need a util for normalizing MP3 files using command line.

by "normalize" - i mean: lower the volume of the file.

Thanks!


p.s
dont refer me to mp3gain

[vitualis]

What do you have against MP3Gain? It's an excellent program that is lossless.

BTW, "Normalise" doesn't mean "lower the volume of the file".

Regards.

[ziv_r]

i attempted 2 use the mp3gain, but none of the options in the command line decreased the volume of the mp3 file!

i want a program that will accept a group of mp3 files, and only the files that there volume is higher then X - the program will lower the volume to that specific file.

[Kurt S]

You are not going to find that in an MP3 editor.

What you want is something like Adobe Audition's group waveform normalize feature. This will average the sound level of all the files.

The problem with wave editors though is that they have to decode the mp3 to modify the audio, then you have to re-encode back to mp3. This creates 2 destructive processes that will lower the quality of the audio.

So your options are to live with different levels of audio or lower the quality when you modify them with a good wave editor.

If your listening to mp3's on Winamp, you could use a compression plugin such as Enhancer 1.07. This will level out the audio somewhat.

[ziv_r]

I dont care so much about the drop in sound quality.
i need a command line program that can do what i described above.

anyone?

[vitualis]

i attempted 2 use the mp3gain, but none of the options in the command line decreased the volume of the mp3 file!

i want a program that will accept a group of mp3 files, and only the files that there volume is higher then X - the program will lower the volume to that specific file.

I think perhaps you are confused about the concept of normalising the volume of MP3s. It is so that there is less variation in average volumes between tracks. This is best achieved by increasing the volume of the quiet tracks (not the other way around).

During playback, you can set whatever "volume" you want with volume control.

Regards.

[ziv_r]

I dont want 2 increase the volume of the quiet tracks, i want 2 lower the volume of the loud parts of the track!

[vitualis]

Think about it. It is the same.

The difference is that by increasing the volume of quiet tracks, you are not losing digital information.

BTW, "normalisation" increases or deceases the volume for the whole track in the same way. What it is useful for is so that different tracks (e.g., songs from different CDs) both sound "about as loud" as each other.

If you want to reduce the "volume" variation within a track, what you need is a program that does "dynamic range compression", not "normalisation".

Regards.

[ziv_r]

i need this util for work.
in my work we are broadcasting slides with background music.
the background music should not exceed 2db (broadcasting rules).
some of the music files are 10db and some are -20db.

i need a program that will lower the volume of the loud parts of the track (above 2db) and will not do anything with the quiet parts of the track.

[vitualis]

If you just posted what you needed to do in detail, then there wouldn't be the confusion...

There is nothing in the windows world that I know of that can give you this degree of audio editing control in the command line. I think that I can say with a fair degree of certainty, that such a program doesn't exist.

You can probably use an advanced audio editing program (e.g., something like CoolEdit) to create filters that can the above for you.

Regards.

[ziv_r]

i know of a program that can do this for wav files in the command line.
isnt there a solution for mp3 files?

[vitualis]

MP3s are encoded and cannot be dynamically adjusted losslessly except for normalisation (which is what mp3gain does).

Why don't you just decode your MP3s to uncompressed PCM and apply the adjustments?

Regards.

[ziv_r]

because this is how i get the files from our customer.
If i will ad another convert (mp3->pcm) it will take 2 much time and will interrupt our broadcasting.

[Soopafresh]

http://www.mpex.net/en/software/details/mp3amp.html


Actually, the effect you need is COMPRESSION or LIMITING. Winamp has several plugins to compress the volume of MP3 files as they are playing.

[ziv_r]

winamp is not good 4 my requirements. i need command line tools.

the link 4 download does not work.

[vitualis]

Sorry, but too much time?

Decoding from MP3 to WAV takes almost no time on a modern processor. You can't apply any filters on MP3 without decoding it first anyway because you can't directly act on the encoded data.

If you already have a command line program that can work on wave files, then I would think it to be trivial to write a simple batch script to first decode the MP3 to uncompressed PCM (? on modern processors - 100x faster than playtime) and then do the appropriate filtering on the PCM.

Regards.