Re-Ripping my CD's : what's with the audio level measurement?

[Bucknekked]

Esteemed Audioholics:
I will save you the backstory, but I have been quietly re-ripping a portion of my CD collection in to AIFF.
I have noticed an anomaly with regards to the volume statistic in iTunes.
If I do a "get info" on a track, then go to the file stats, iTunes displays the audio stats for the file.
One of them is volume.

I see a value in the volume stat that seems to vary from about 0db to over -10.1 db. Some files seem to not have a value at all. the field is blank. There is not a 10db sound level difference when the songs get played.

QUESTION: What is the volume indication trying to tell me about the files? The songs on an album can vary just as wildly from one to the next. There is also a lot of variance one album to another.

Here are some screenshots of what I see just in case there are questions about what the heck I'm talking about.

 

[slipperybidness]

I really can't answer your questions.....but why would you use iTunes??? Much better (free) programs are out there.

Unless you got yourself locked into the Apple ecosystem...........

I do have a guess for your questions--It may be some type of volume equalization going on.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I think it was meant to be used for this:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201724

 

[Bucknekked]

I really can't answer your questions.....but why would you use iTunes??? Much better (free) programs are out there.

Unless you got yourself locked into the Apple ecosystem...........

slipperybidness

I knew someone would ask "why iTunes". I get it. There are iTunes haters. I get it, there are lots of reasons to leave iTunes and use another player/library manager. I wish those who dislike iTunes would also get that there are lots of folks who are perfectly content using iTunes. As you mentioned there are lots of free players out there. For a Mac owner, iTunes is also free. I am not locked in to the Apple ecosystem, I voluntarily jumped in and enjoy the ecosystem. I have Macs all over the house, and extended family.

Part of the re-ripping is to get all my CD's to a lossless state. Once I'm there, and I'm not far off from being done, I will have cleaned up my library and it will be in as clean and an organized state as possible. It will also be free from any dependencies on iTunes/Apple. I can import it in to JRiver or whatever alternative system that seems good to me should I get pissed off at iTunes enough to make a change.

So far, after 9 years inside the Apply ecosystem, I'm pretty happy. iTunes is part of that. There are days, like after an update that changes something, when I'm pissed. I have learned to get over it.

Slipperybidness: peace ! I get it with the iTunes topic.

 

[Bucknekked]

I think it was meant to be used for this:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201724

BoredSysAdmin
When I was trying to figure out what the volume metric was for, I did see this topic on the support forum. It didn't seem to tie together or mention the use of the volume number. Thank you for pointing it out as a possibility : that means at least two minds were thinking alike

I don't use "sound check" and that makes it even more of an anomaly. There's a wide variation in the metric, but not a wide variation in how loud a song seems to play. From song to song within an album, they are consistent to play and listen to, but, the number is all over the map from song to song.

BTW, I don't feel bad that the first two responses didn't know the answer. That just helps me feel less stupid as I try to learn the guts of this wacky and wonderful hobby.

 

[TLS Guy]

I suspect those db numbers are telling how far below peak mastering level the file is.

I don't know the Apple environment. I don't know any engineers who work with audio files in the Apple environment so I can't help you much. However when I master I get the level of the highest peak. Then I change the gain of the whole file to leave no more than 1 db of headroom. This takes literally seconds.

This is important, not only for consistency, but for signal to noise. Digital media is not noiseless, as it has to be dithered (purposely added white noise) to prevent 100% coding error on low level signals. So setting optimum gain for the file is important.

May be there is someone here that works with Audio on Macs. However the pros that I rub shoulders with say don't.

 

[Bucknekked]

I suspect those db numbers are telling how far below peak mastering level the file is.
This is important, not only for consistency, but for signal to noise. Digital media is not noiseless, as it has to be dithered (purposely added white noise) to prevent 100% coding error on low level signals. So setting optimum gain for the file is important.

May be there is someone here that works with Audio on Macs. However the pros that I rub shoulders with say don't.

TLS Guy
I think you are on to something here with the relationship of those db measurements and peak mastering level. If I take your sentence about peak mastering level and search on that, I get results where OP's are sharing their individual song or file measurement values. The discussions tend to center around how to take songs with individual measurement variation and how to master the entire CD so the songs play at the same volume levels.

The discussions cover the topic of how to adjust the volume of a CD to be consistent across all the songs. My music plays just fine. No complaints on volume. I am just trying to understand the volume metric. This may be a more complex answer than I need to actually understand. But, its fun to widen my horizons and try to understand more about the technical aspects of my music. I may yet have a chance at learning something.

 

[slipperybidness]

slipperybidness

I knew someone would ask "why iTunes". I get it. There are iTunes haters. I get it, there are lots of reasons to leave iTunes and use another player/library manager. I wish those who dislike iTunes would also get that there are lots of folks who are perfectly content using iTunes. As you mentioned there are lots of free players out there. For a Mac owner, iTunes is also free. I am not locked in to the Apple ecosystem, I voluntarily jumped in and enjoy the ecosystem. I have Macs all over the house, and extended family.

Part of the re-ripping is to get all my CD's to a lossless state. Once I'm there, and I'm not far off from being done, I will have cleaned up my library and it will be in as clean and an organized state as possible. It will also be free from any dependencies on iTunes/Apple. I can import it in to JRiver or whatever alternative system that seems good to me should I get pissed off at iTunes enough to make a change.

So far, after 9 years inside the Apply ecosystem, I'm pretty happy. iTunes is part of that. There are days, like after an update that changes something, when I'm pissed. I have learned to get over it.

Slipperybidness: peace ! I get it with the iTunes topic.

Hey, if you make your choice then you live with it, no problem. I just wanted to be sure that you weren't "iTunes by default" and never explored any other options.

I'm 100% FOOBAR2000 fanboy!

I started using iTunes with my old 20Gb iPod, then with my iPhone. Then, I got enough sense to swap to Android and FOOBAR

 

[slipperybidness]

TLS Guy
I think you are on to something here with the relationship of those db measurements and peak mastering level. If I take your sentence about peak mastering level and search on that, I get results where OP's are sharing their individual song or file measurement values. The discussions tend to center around how to take songs with individual measurement variation and how to master the entire CD so the songs play at the same volume levels.

The discussions cover the topic of how to adjust the volume of a CD to be consistent across all the songs. My music plays just fine. No complaints on volume. I am just trying to understand the volume metric. This may be a more complex answer than I need to actually understand. But, its fun to widen my horizons and try to understand more about the technical aspects of my music. I may yet have a chance at learning something.

Hey, what program are you using to rip CDs?

Just curious. I'm a big fan of Exact Audio Copy. It is free, and it compares you rips to known good rips and lets you know that the rip is accurate or not. It does take some configuration before your first rip, but I'm ok with that for $0

 

[Bucknekked]

Hey, if you make your choice then you live with it, no problem. I just wanted to be sure that you weren't "iTunes by default" and never explored any other options.

I'm 100% FOOBAR2000 fanboy!

I started using iTunes with my old 20Gb iPod, then with my iPhone. Then, I got enough sense to swap to Android and FOOBAR

slipperybidness
If you be a foobar2000 fanboy, then you already know there's no foobar2000 port for Mac
I believe on another thread you sang the praises of foobar2000 so I went and checked it out.
Alas, no Mac port. No port, no foo. That's part and parcel of living in the Mac world. Sometimes a popular toy isn't available.

I took a look when I first encoded my CD's a couple of years ago at JRiver and Plex as alternative players/music managers. I decided to step up and use Plex for both audio and movies and home theater.
Long story short : I ended up hating Plex and Plex began to hate me back. So much for leaving iTunes. I came back and haven't tried another option since. I remain open to suggestions, but I'm not actively looking to jump ship. Yet.

 

[Bucknekked]

Hey, what program are you using to rip CDs?

Just curious. I'm a big fan of Exact Audio Copy. It is free, and it compares you rips to known good rips and lets you know that the rip is accurate or not. It does take some configuration before your first rip, but I'm ok with that for $0

I have two working options and have used them both.
XLD is one of those instrumented, geek featured rippers. I have used it and it gets the job done.
iTunes will also rip and I use it a lot because it does the job and the importing function is easier.

I wasted a LOT of time with XLD trying to get album art to attach in the meta data. I will save you the backstory, but it has issues. As a ripper, its ok. For functions like meta data, not so much.
iTunes is easier to use, get the meta data correct, and import in to a library without hassle.

I am open to suggestions on rippers. I'm ripping while I am on conference calls. I might was well make good use of the time.

 

[slipperybidness]

slipperybidness
If you be a foobar2000 fanboy, then you already know there's no foobar2000 port for Mac
I believe on another thread you sang the praises of foobar2000 so I went and checked it out.
Alas, no Mac port. No port, no foo. That's part and parcel of living in the Mac world. Sometimes a popular toy isn't available.

I took a look when I first encoded my CD's a couple of years ago at JRiver and Plex as alternative players/music managers. I decided to step up and use Plex for both audio and movies and home theater.
Long story short : I ended up hating Plex and Plex began to hate me back. So much for leaving iTunes. I came back and haven't tried another option since. I remain open to suggestions, but I'm not actively looking to jump ship. Yet.

Yeah, that's the love/hate with Apple! Love that "everything just works", hate that "now you belong to Apple" mentality and the lack of options like we see on Windows Machines.

I have no experience with PLEX.

I do also use Kodi, but mostly that is for Video applications.

I am also familiar with VLC, I've had to use that for a few rips and videos that I have that won't play on anything else.

There is a LOT to like about FOOBAR, I guess if you wanted a complaint, it might be "too simple", but I'm OK with that.

 

[slipperybidness]

I have two working options and have used them both.
XLD is one of those instrumented, geek featured rippers. I have used it and it gets the job done.
iTunes will also rip and I use it a lot because it does the job and the importing function is easier.

I wasted a LOT of time with XLD trying to get album art to attach in the meta data. I will save you the backstory, but it has issues. As a ripper, its ok. For functions like meta data, not so much.
iTunes is easier to use, get the meta data correct, and import in to a library without hassle.

I am open to suggestions on rippers. I'm ripping while I am on conference calls. I might was well make good use of the time.

Like I mentioned, EAC is the ripper for me, that came at suggestions from other AH members years ago too.

There is a program dedicated to only managing your meta-data that is supposed to be pretty good. I can't remember the name of it, I never used it. Someone else may come along with that info.

 

[TLS Guy]

TLS Guy
I think you are on to something here with the relationship of those db measurements and peak mastering level. If I take your sentence about peak mastering level and search on that, I get results where OP's are sharing their individual song or file measurement values. The discussions tend to center around how to take songs with individual measurement variation and how to master the entire CD so the songs play at the same volume levels.

The discussions cover the topic of how to adjust the volume of a CD to be consistent across all the songs. My music plays just fine. No complaints on volume. I am just trying to understand the volume metric. This may be a more complex answer than I need to actually understand. But, its fun to widen my horizons and try to understand more about the technical aspects of my music. I may yet have a chance at learning something.

What I have no idea about is whether those db levels are peak or mean. However there are 10 db discrepancies noted in the selections you published. That is a lot, and you do have a volume problem in terms of S/N. It may be masked if your material is compressed.

Can you open up a WAV. file and look at it on Mac?

I'm concerned that Apple will get your selections the same level by applying blanket compression. I say that as you did not mention that you have the selections discretely identified to edit separate from the others.

There are two ways of dealing with this. The easiest way is to have each song/track as a separate WAV file. You can see a bunch tiled on the screen.
Next you measure the how far the highest peak is below maximum permitted modulation. Then you increase the gain of the file leaving no more then a db of headroom.

Next you assemble the WAVs in a Cue-file in the order you want them to play. Next you set the length of the pauses, or no pause between tracks. Now you are ready to archive and or burn the CD.

The other way is to have everything in one WAV, and then put down a start marker and then track markers. The end marker will be place automatically, if not the file is erased. Now you can highlight each track and check peak and adjust each individually.

Now you can drag the whole WAV file into a Cue-file. Again set track interval pauses the way you want. Now you can archive or burn.

Don't forget to re-save after making any changes to a WAV file or Cue-file, other wise it will be erased when you save it.

It is that simple and for what you want to do, and quick.

 

[Bucknekked]

Like I mentioned, EAC is the ripper for me, that came at suggestions from other AH members years ago too.

There is a program dedicated to only managing your meta-data that is supposed to be pretty good. I can't remember the name of it, I never used it. Someone else may come along with that info.

When I was ripping Blu-rays and DVD's, I used a meta data program called MetaX. It went defunct. A new group picked it up and now its called MetaZ.

We are batting 1000 on recommendations today. There is no Exact Audio Copy port for Mac either.
If I look up alternatives to EAC, XLD is at the top of the list. I already have that, so we are probably using a very similar tool by two different authors.

 

[Bucknekked]

[QUOTE="TLS Guy, post: 1168940, member: 29650"

Can you open up a WAV. file and look at it on Mac?
[/QUOTE]
TLS Guy
I am positive there is a way to open up a WAV on a CD and look at it on a MAC.
I am also pretty positive I do not know how to do that.

I hope my post is clear: I don't have a problem with the audio levels on my newly ripped tracks.
Nothing is broken or out of sorts. In fact, the opposite is true: these lossless AIFF files are the best sounding stuff my machine has ever put out. I just had a question about why there is such a variability from song to song and album to album on that metric called "volume" associated with each song file.

It would seem that with a variance in the metric, there should be some meaning behind the measure.
If they went to the trouble of measuring it and reporting it, its gotta mean something.

I appreciate all the answers so far. Its been a good discussion.

 

[TLS Guy]

[QUOTE="TLS Guy, post: 1168940, member: 29650"

Can you open up a WAV. file and look at it on Mac?

TLS Guy
I am positive there is a way to open up a WAV on a CD and look at it on a MAC.
I am also pretty positive I do not know how to do that.

I hope my post is clear: I don't have a problem with the audio levels on my newly ripped tracks.
Nothing is broken or out of sorts. In fact, the opposite is true: these lossless AIFF files are the best sounding stuff my machine has ever put out. I just had a question about why there is such a variability from song to song and album to album on that metric called "volume" associated with each song file.

It would seem that with a variance in the metric, there should be some meaning behind the measure.
If they went to the trouble of measuring it and reporting it, its gotta mean something.

I appreciate all the answers so far. Its been a good discussion.[/QUOTE]

There is obviously a meaning but Apple kept it to themselves.

The fact you have such variation in levels likely means one of two things. That there is huge variation in the dynamic range/compression of the files, or that some of the mastering engineers are incompetent.

The former occurs because as you widen dynamic range the average level decreases.

I suspect that number is the average dynamic level. However the important number is the peak level. If you exceed the permissible peak level on a WAV file or any digital file you run out of bits and that sounds really bad. You can never exceed peak level ever. So you master to peak and have to accept the average level unless you want to use dynamic range compression. I don't.

So if you have files of varying dynamic range strung together, then there will be wide variations in average level. There in nothing you can do about that other then making the dynamics ranges identical. That is often done, but a bad idea unless you like compressed music. I don't.

By the way, if those numbers are peak levels, then some of those mastering engineers are incompetent, which is common.

To do a decent job of all this really does require good software and a wide or two screens.

 

[Hi Ho]

While I don't know exactly what the volume numbers mean (if they're peak or mean) I am pretty certain that it has to do with the Sound Check feature and I guess it analyzes that wether you're using Sound Check or not. I opened a few of my ripped files and it shows different values for the "volume" field. I am also certain that the ripped files are not changed. There is no compression or anything applied to the files as you rip them. The only time iTunes will do anything is if you have Sound Check enabled in the options and that is done on the fly and the original files are not changed.

Fun fact that I just learned. You can change the volume of individual files by going to the options tab:

Looks like you can even specify an exact start and end time as well as EQ settings and wether or not to play a song during shuffle.

As for iTunes itself, I use a Mac and really it works great on a Mac. I haven't used iTunes on Windows in years but I remember it was not a good experience. I would imagine that most people that hate iTunes have only used it on Windows.

 

[PietjePuk]

There is a program dedicated to only managing your meta-data that is supposed to be pretty good. I can't remember the name of it, I never used it. Someone else may come along with that info.

I've recently used MusicBrainz Picard to find and add the appropriate meta data. Worked reasonably well.

Furthermore I'm quite interested in differences in sound quality while using other rippers. Isn't it just creating a 1 on 1 digital copy?

 

[Bucknekked]

I've recently used MusicBrainz Picard to find and add the appropriate meta data. Worked reasonably well.

Furthermore I'm quite interested in differences in sound quality while using other rippers. Isn't it just creating a 1 on 1 digital copy?

shhhhhhh. Don't say "isn't ripping just making a 1 on 1 copy?" in a forum with audiophiles lurking about. You'll probably set one of them off on a rant on how one method, although there's no technical differences, sounds better than another to their "golden ears". Dear, or dear, I'd hate to see a newb run down and trampled.

Just as a PERSONAL OPINION, making a bit perfect copy of a CD in to a digital library is pretty much what ripping CD's should be all about. Its been my experience if one of the genuine enthusiasts hears that, there's a rant coming on .

MusicBrainz makes good stuff.