Consistant Volume levels

[KB38]

Just wondering what you guys use to keep the volume consistant.

I download MP3s, convert to Wav and then use WaveLab to try and tweak the Wavs so that all the songs on a particular CD have the same volume. The problem is that I eyeball it... I watch the master volume meter and then try to get them all to match. It's hard when you open them one at a time. There's always 1 or two songs that are noticable lower in volume than the rest.

Anyway, if you guys don't mind, let me know what your methods are. Thanks

[ponzan]

many ways to do it. Search this site and you'll find plenty of opinions I've seen here bout this subject. My way, I use Sonic Forge 6 for all audio proyects, there you can normalize your mp3's with the RMS setting and get equivalent subjective volumes. Or normalize by RMS in SonicFoundry CDArchitect or BatchConverter. Those are great proggies. Don't know if Wavelab has something similar.

[Deft]

Most tracks should have been through some kind of mastering process so a simple normalise to peak level of -0.1dB or 0.0dB should do fine.
Otherwise if you want to reduce the dynamic range and get an overall 'louder' sound you could use some compression - but that is a whole other can of worms.......

[scarecrow]

Your method is DEFINITELY the safest- although somewhat laborous. Normalizing volumes at MP3 level severely cripples the output quality...

[Fox Mulder]

This:
http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/

For .MP3s(lossless):
http://www.geocities.com/mp3gain/

For .WAVs(Wave Gain):
http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/others.html

[KB38]

Thanks everyone... Fox, those links rule dude