How To Avoid Distortion Caused by Auto Volume Leveling?

For the first time I loaded tracks to the library and
enabled volume checking.
When I play these files back I get distortion which sounds
very much like the file is being over amplified. I guess
MP is working to an average level and some tracks have a
low average level but quite high peaks?

Is there anyway to avoid this.

Davy

PS I used Total Recorder to normalise the volume of the
files before importing them to MP.

cwdjrxyz
Thu Jul 10 16:11:25 PDT 2008

On Jul 10, 12:59=A0pm, Davy <m...@removeallthistextchobham.org.uk>
wrote:
> For the first time I loaded tracks to the library and
> enabled volume checking.
> When I play these files back I get distortion which sounds
> very much like the file is being over amplified. I guess
> MP is working to an average level and some tracks have a
> low average level but quite high peaks?
>
> Is there anyway to avoid this.
>
> Davy
>
> PS I used Total Recorder to normalise the volume of the
> files before importing them to MP.

Music that has some very soft passages and some very loud ones should
not be normalized unless the whole file is scanned for peak level and
then the volume is set so that it reaches no higher than the peak
level found. I doubt if many normalize functions found on most
consumer programs do this. Unlike analog recordings, the distortion is
very nasty if the recording level is only a bit too high. If you have
an audio wave editor, use a high resolution wave to capture the audio.
Then the editor will give you a wave form with a line at the peak
level allowed. You can scan the whole wave form by hand, find the
highest peak level, and then reduce the volume just enough for this
highest peak to be just under the allowed peak level. Such wave sound
editors are included in the more elaborate media suites put out by
Roxio, Nero, Goldwave, etc., but the better ones usually are not free.

For those who record classical music that often is broken up into say
4 cuts for the 4 movements of a symphony, you should scan all of the
cuts and set the level to not exceed the level limit for the highest
level found in any of the cuts. Then record all cuts at this level.
Much of this music is intended to have a very wide dymanic range. One
cut may be have somevery soft passages with some parts nearly at a
whisper level. Other cuts, often near the end of the work, can have a
very high level with a 100+ piece orchestra, a huge chorus, several
solo singers, etc all playing and singing nearly as loud as they can
at the same time.

Davy
Fri Jul 11 08:04:45 PDT 2008

cwdjrxyz <spamtrap2@cwdjr.info> wrote in news:c1560b4f-
df09-410f-99aa-1fd392d0c655
@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

> On Jul 10, 12:59 pm, Davy <m...
@removeallthistextchobham.org.uk>
> wrote:
>> For the first time I loaded tracks to the library and
>> enabled volume checking.
>> When I play these files back I get distortion which
sounds
>> very much like the file is being over amplified. I
guess
>> MP is working to an average level and some tracks
have a
>> low average level but quite high peaks?
>>
>> Is there anyway to avoid this.
>>
>> Davy
>>
>> PS I used Total Recorder to normalise the volume of
the
>> files before importing them to MP.
>
> Music that has some very soft passages and some very
loud ones should
> not be normalized unless the whole file is scanned for
peak level and
> then the volume is set so that it reaches no higher
than the peak
> level found. I doubt if many normalize functions found
on most
> consumer programs do this. Snip .....

thanks for the very full reply. However, I understand
that Total Recorder is sophisticated enough to scan for
peaks not just averages. In fact you can tell it how
many milliseconds worth of peaks it can ignore - so
transient faults don't affect the calculation.

The problem was not caused by the normalisation; when I
uncheck the 'auto leveling' in Media Player the
distortion disappears so I am confident it is a Media
Player problem. Just puzzled why others haven't
experienced this?

Davy