Volume Adjustments on MP3s

I went ahead and burned of my favorite music on a CD to listen when in the car and just doing stuff at home. But there is one problem - one of my songs is a lot quieter than the others. I always have to turn the volume way up when I get to that song. Then when the next song comes up, it almost blows the speakers out. Is there any program or trick that you can use to change the volume of a song before burning it to a CD? (I hope this isn't too difficult of question...)

 

Yea, there are a lot of programs that do that. Winamp has a couple plugins that does it. iTunes can do it too. So you have many options. I have used the iTunes one. It does a good job at it.

 

If possible, could you briefly describe the process of increasing the volume of a song using iTunes?

 

I adjust my mp3 volumes with this program: mp3gain http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/
you can even undo the adjustment at a later date if you haven't wiped out the history file the program keeps. Also, it will adjust all files to sound same volume, or it can adjust them by album so that the quiet song on the album isn't too loud compared to the rest of the album. Really cool program. very easy to use and nice help file.

 

mp3gain seconded, it's what i used on my 80GB collection. (took me a night though) i was gonna recommend it but noahsark here beat me to it

 

Thanks everyone for your help. It works!

 

I was also going to suggest MP3gain, glad you got it working!

 

Another option, and a real good program to cut big files (like radio streams) apart is to use the 'normalize' function in MP3 DirectCut.

 

for my iPod..i use iTunes to make the volume up to 100%...then use ephpod to increase the volume by another 80%....no sound distortion or anything...jus louder music and more battery life

 

what should the target volume ideally be?? it says 89db is default. is that good enough??

 

That what I use in mp3gain unless the track will clip, in which case I turn dB down so that no tracks clip on an album.

 

"track-clip" means....?

 

clipping is when signal strength extends above the limit the format/hardware can handle, thus you get distortion. ("crackling")

edit: here's a pic to illustrate this effect