iTunes: How to nuke Sound Check's changes?

G

GrBear

Registered
Hey everyone,

I was going through some of my music library today and noted some of the songs I ripped off my Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms CD were way quiet. I discovered that soundcheck was turned on and is screwing around with the playback volumes. I've turned soundcheck off, but it's still doing it. From poking around the net, apparently there's a tag in the file that tells iTunes to use a certain playback volume for each track.

How can I nuke that tag so my tracks playback properly.

Please don't tell me to reimport all my CD's. It took like 3 weeks to import them all as AAC tracks. I don't want to have to do that again until a new format comes along that's better.

Thanks for any help!
 
In your iTunes library, go to Edit -> Select All. Press Cmd-I to get the "Show Info" window up, then go to the Options tab. Make sure the "Volume adjustment" is set to "None".

If this fails to resolve the problem, you might need to use an ID3 tag batch editor program to fix the files.
 
I've checked the volume settings in the info and they're all set to +/- 0 default. I also tried examining the ID3 tags with media rage, but it would seem the volume setting is hidden and not readily obvious unfortunately.

There's plenty of people mentioning to fix the ID3 tags, but nobody mentions which one.
 
You should be able to turn it on and off as much as you want. The data is stored in the files (or is it the iTunes database?), but iTunes is supposed to ignore it if the box in the preferences isn't checked. I toggle the sound check feature often, since it works very well for some of my playlists and horribly for others. I can hear very clearly that the volume changes as it should, as soon as I check/uncheck the box in the preferences and click OK.

Are you sure the volume problems aren't actually part of the mp3s, and sound check is simply not affecting them at all? I've noticed that with the tracks I have that are really quiet, sound check does very little. It sounds like that's what's happening to you.

You might be interested in third-party volume normalization apps such as VolumeLogic or iVolume.
 
I had to run to the basement and pull out the original CD again to cross compare the original verses the encoded AAC file. The CD seems to be filled with a multitude of pooly volume levelled tracks (extremely poor engineering imho on Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms).

Suprisingly soundcheck does nothing to attempt to correct it. With soundcheck on, the file info says -1.9db, which doesn't tell me if it's reducing it another 1.9db when playing it back with soundcheck, or if the track is 1.9db lower than the mean value and should be volume boosted. *sighs*

Using a volume normalizer may be my only hope for enjoying this at a decent level, preferably without adding too much in the way of distortion from the normalizing process.

Thanks for the help.
 
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