MP3Gain

[RoWin7]

I use MP3 Gain on my computer before I burn my music to a CD. Don't know if it's the best, but I can tell you it works fine, and it's not too technical. I haven't added anything to my Windows.

 

[anjou2]

OK. have downloaded the exe file for the portable version and am informed by MP3 Gain help that some files, which are needed by Win, are missing.
The only way to access these files is to install the "full" version first (which seems to defeat the object!)

 

[ToughDiamond]

OK. have downloaded the exe file for the portable version and am informed by MP3 Gain help that some files, which are needed by Win, are missing.
The only way to access these files is to install the "full" version first (which seems to defeat the object!)

That sucks :-( Did it unpack to 5.08mb as 60 files in 14 folders? That's what mine did. If you've got the exact same package as I got, then I guess it follows that there's something in my Win7 Pro 32-bit that isn't in your Win7 Home 64-bit, such as that Visual Basic thing. Anybody else got the portable version working in Home Edition? Somewhere I found a reference to a couple of files that are sometimes missing - MSCOMCTL.OCX and MSVBVM60.DLL - on my computer those are both in the portable Mp3Gain package and the system drive. I guess you could also try the other portable package which is a little larger and might just work: https://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/portableapps/wxMP3gainPortable/wxMP3gainPortable_3.7.paf.exe

 

[anjou2]

Thanks TD, pretty sure those were the files mentioned as missing, watch this space!

 

[ToughDiamond]

Good luck! I tried deleting MSCOMCTL.OCX from my system drive, just to see whether or not that file needs to be in the system for Mp3Gain to run. When I tried launching Mp3Gain Portable, it put the file back and opened normally. So I guess the answer is yes, it needs to be in the system, but if it isn't, the program should put that right when you first launch it, provided it's the right version. Windows wouldn't let me delete MSVBVM60.DLL from the system drive so I couldn't immediately do the same experiment on that one.

 

[anjou2]

OK. have given up trying to install the portable job.
Downloaded Win-full_1-3-4......works a treat.
Thanks to all.

 

[ToughDiamond]

Well done - I always feel a tad safer with portable apps, but given that portable Mp3Gain can add files to the system drive anyway, the advantage can't be all that great.

While I was sniffing around the subject of automated gain levelling, I noticed a few things and saw a couple of alternative apps that might turn out useful one day:

You might prefer a program that works on .wav files if you want finer volume steps than 1.5db (apparently that's the limit for Mp3s), or if your target device doesn't support the replay gain parameter of your music files, or if you just prefer the quality of uncompressed files. Gain-shifting of .wav files is "destructive" and could theoretically lead to quality loss if taken to extremes, but for simple one-shot levelling it's very unlikely to be a problem. WaveGain is a portable app that ought to do the trick on .wav files. It's DOS-based but includes a Windows front end in the package:
Download WaveGain 1.2.8

Foobar2000 does the same tricks and supports most audio formats. The single download lets you choose between full and portable versions when you run it:
Download Portable foobar2000 1.0.3

 

[anjou2]

Thanks again, at the moment I'm highly pleased with the difference MP3Gain has made. Dragged and dropped 12 tracks for transfer to CD, then onwards to tape to play in my old sports car. The CD was perfect on replay and have yet to transfer to tape via a machine which does this automatically. As mentioned before I may lose a little quality on the tape doing it this way but it's not really apparent in a noisy open car!

 

[ToughDiamond]

I too was impressed by Mp3Gain. I gave it a set of album tracks I'd collected from different sources, and it evened them all out in seconds. They were hopelessly diverse in level before and it'd have been a pain in the butt to do the job manually. For playing in a noisy car I often find it helps to use dynamics compression as well if the recordings are wide-range, though I suspect that's better done by the player itself, if there's a player that can do it.