WinAmp playback volume

June 23, 2005 6:52 AM

The volume of the songs played in WinAmp varies wildy. Is there some sort of volume equalizer for WinAmp?

I'm looking for something along the lines of iTunes' "Sound Check" that "automatically adjusts song playback volume to the same level". I came across one plug-in called Replay Gain. Does this work, or should I be looking for something else?

PS. Using iTunes is not the solution I'm looking for here.

posted by geeky to Media & Arts (11 answers total)

Here is a thread from the WinAmp message board talking about a few options.
posted by bwilms at 7:06 AM on June 23, 2005

Best answer: this seemed like a good idea, so i just downloaded rock steady here (it's mentioned in bwilms's thread, but the links there don't have the download).

seems to work ok - the default setting isn't terribly over-compressed, to my ears.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:43 AM on June 23, 2005

Here's a Volume Normalizer plug-in for Winamp. I bet there are ton out there - you can browse and search through all Winamp plug-ins here.
posted by nitsuj at 8:13 AM on June 23, 2005

Volume Logic is not bad.
posted by kindall at 9:45 AM on June 23, 2005

I asked this same question a few months ago, and got some great responses.


http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/12589
posted by LouMac at 9:49 AM on June 23, 2005

Response by poster: Doh! I swear I searched for previous questions and that one didn't come up! But thanks LouMac - I knew someone else had to be having the same problem! :)

I installed Rock Steady and we'll see how it goes. Like nitsuj said, there seem to be a ton of these plugins out there, but I was hoping to find someone who could recommend one in particular.
posted by geeky at 10:24 AM on June 23, 2005

Yes, there are plugins to normalize Winamp's output. Lots of them.
posted by majick at 11:25 AM on June 23, 2005

Enhancer is my favorite Winamp DSP--old, free, great sounding. It also does volume normalization.
posted by mookieproof at 11:41 AM on June 23, 2005

out of curiosity, out of all of these replies the second time, which would be the overall best one for someone who just wants to normalise thier music volume? it's not that i can't understand it, just i don't need a technical reason just a trusty 'stick with __," cos i'm curious now, too.
posted by Lockeownzj00 at 2:41 PM on June 23, 2005

Response by poster: Lockeownzj00, I installed Rock Steady and so far it seems to be working pretty well. I just used the default settings.
posted by geeky at 12:02 PM on June 24, 2005

Try MP3 Gain. It's a terrific little program that quickly analyzes all your music files and normalizes them in a much more intelligent way than most of the plugins out there. MP3Gain doesn't just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear. Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless. There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.

The best part is that it actually fixes the files themselves, so you never have to worry about normalizing them again, say if you listen to them with an iPod or something.

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/
posted by zwemer at 4:33 PM on June 25, 2005