is there a way to know which tracks can be volume-maximized?

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Michael REMY
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Joined: Sun Nov 28, 2010 6:07 am
Location: Amiens
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is there a way to know which tracks can be volume-maximized?

Post by Michael REMY »

hi,

with Goldwave, is there a way to select many file (like mp3, wav, flac) and determine which one can have its volume be maximized ?

it costs a bunch of time/clicks to open a file, go into maximize volum, select the default profil, do the process and look (by eye view) is there were or not a gain. Doing this file by file is boring...

i know there was the batch lot feature, but it did not have the feature "if the gain is less than X, then do nothing".
In fact, a batch feature to just display the possible gain (without update/save) will be userful !

best regards
DougDbug
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Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 3:33 pm
Location: Silicon Valley

Re: is there a way to know which tracks can be volume-maximi

Post by DougDbug »

You should be able to do it with Batch Processing, but I've never used Batch Processing so I can't help you.

Or, you should be able to write a script for SoX but again I can't help. If you use another application note that what GoldWave calls "Maximize", everybody else calls it "Normalize".

You don't have to check the files first because it doesn't hurt to Maximize more than once.* If you Maximize twice, nothing happens the 2nd time.




* The exception is MP3s (or other lossy formats)… Lots of complications... When you open an MP3 in GoldWave (or any "regular" audio editor) the file is decompressed. If you re-save as MP3 you are going through another generation of lossy compression. You may not hear any quality loss but "damage" does accumulate.

Also, MP3 changes the wave shape making some peaks higher and some peaks lower. So, it's not unusual to get peaks over 0dB if you Maximize and then save-as MP3... That makes maximizing/normalizing MP3s "difficult" because the peaks change when you encode to MP3.

BTW - MP3 can go over 0dB without clipping... Your DAC will clip if you play it at full-digital volume, but as far as I know that slight-clipping is not audible, so if you want you can just ignore it and call it "close enough" and/or some people normalize to -1dB or so to leave headroom for the "new" MP3 peaks.

And, there's one more "strange thing"... GoldWave's MP3 decoder clips at 0dB so if your MP3 goes over 0dB GoldWave will clip it and you'll never know and if you re-save you'll end-up saving a clipped version of the file! So if you want to "see" the peaks change with MP3 encoding, Maximize to -3dB, save-as MP3, re-open the file and if you Maximize again you'll see the peaks are no longer -3dB.

Audacity will open/decode the MP3 without clipping so you can check the true peaks but that doesn't solve the other issues... MP3DirectCut can do some lossless editing and it can normalize but it also fails to detect peaks above 0dB. So, you'd have to check the peaks in Audacity and then adjust the level/gain in MP3DirectCut. And, there's one more complication - The level of an MP3 can only be losslessly adjusted in 1.5dB steps.
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