iPod frustration

[cellio]

I wish that my iPod (nano, in case it matters) did volume-balancing for playlists. If I play an album everything's generally fine because the publishers of the album made track volume self-consistent (usually), but that doesn't help so much if you assemble a playlist from multiple albums. Publishers don't always agree on the same volume standards. It's irritating to have to adjust volume from track to track.

Editing the tracks themselves isn't the answer, unless you edit every track you might ever play. Every track is automatically part of at least three playlists -- album, artist, and genre -- along with whatever playlists you create. This needs to be a playback option, not an edit of the source data.

It seems hard to believe that this isn't there, but I can't find it. Now granted, the UI for the iPod isn't that intuitive to me [1], so it might really be in there and just not covered in the documentation that came with the iPod, but Google seems to agree that it's not there. How frustrating, and surprising.

[1] For example, I am still utterly mystified by what sequence of key-presses I accidentally issue from time to time that lands me in a "rate this song" mode with no clear way to abort.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

There's an option called "Sound Check" in iTunes (Preferences -> Playback -> midway down the dialog box) which is supposed to do this on the fly, but it doesn't seem to have much an effect. But I think the iPods don't do it. This is a pity as it's a fairly easy thing to implement.

You might try scouring the web for a 3rd party app to do this. It would have to edit every track you own, of course, to make them all the same apparent volume, but it might be a one-time process you could let run overnight. It would make albums sound a bit odd, as producers often use overall volume to achieve an effect, but it might help for casual listening.

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

I think the iPods don't do it

my understanding (not authoritative) is that you enable Sound Check (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61655) in iTunes. over time, iTunes compiles baseline volume information about each of your tracks and stores it in the metadata.

then, when you play the tracks which have baseline volume metadata on your iPod (and you enable Sound Check on your iPod by selecting iPod->Settings->Sound Check), your iPod adjusts the volume of each track in response to that metadata. in theory this makes all your tracks play at more or less the same volume; in practice this works well if you're playing tracks that have a relatively small dynamic range and poorly if you're playing tracks that have a large dynamic range.

-steve

[cellio]

Thanks! (Including for the warning about songs with wide range.)

[cellio]

Thanks!