Great Discussion,
Larry, you can download the free full featured GoldWave trial version, which can be used with no time limit. It is not as simple to use as MP3Gain but not too difficult. It has full batch processing capability so all of your desired files can be processed at once. I would suggest that you download it and try it. That's the purpose of shareware.
MP3Gain is also a great program and perhaps using both programs might be a usefull solution. "No pain,No gain", so try them all and see.
Just be sure to save your original files as Wave files and then make copies and experiment on the copies.
As Technicsplayer suggests, that unless your goal is to only make files that can be used in an MP3 player or for the internet, you should only use the wave file format because that is the native format for any audio CD.
Good Luck,
Walt


[This message has been edited by Walt Meyer (edited 05-23-2003).]

[This message has been edited by Walt Meyer (edited 05-23-2003).]

the main advantage of mp3gain apart from the saving in time compared to wave editors for Larry's solution is that the change is implemented digitally directly on the mp3 and is lossless, that is can be reversed with zero difference to the original, whereas a wave editor needs to convert the mp3 to wave and then convert back again to mp3 after normalisation, which involves a compression of a compression.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say " any mp3 will forever lose information in the original wave file" What information is lost forever?

I still don't "hear" any difference burning CD'S or converting to KN7000 SDCard no matter if it's a WAVE MP3 or WMA.

Walt I did not know that GoldWave was a no limit shareware. Maybe I'll give it a try. Thanks
Larry

well, high frequencies are curtailed on all but the very highest settings, and channels are mono-ed at high frequencies where stereo positioning information is lost on medium settings. Compression depends on masking, ie foreground sounds are encoded and background sounds are ignored. So mp3 compression is not like zip which can be restored to its original state, it throws away information which can never be restored.
The amount of compression threshold of differentiation will differ between people, source material and playback equipment like any other subjective judgement.
Making your audio cd from a mp3 of your wave recording does not restore the original wave quality, just effectively re-records your low bandwidth recording at a higher bandwidth again needed to make an audio cd. An analogy might be taking your 15 ips half inch 2 track Dolby A reel to reel recording, recording it on a good quality cassette with Dolby B, and then recording the cassette output on high speed reel to reel with Dolby A again.

Does anybody know of a program that will normalize WAV files so that they can be burned on a CD with all of them being at a relative even volume?

Thanks,

Larry

Larry,
GoldWave will do WAV files, MP3, plus 14 other types.
Walt

any wave editing program will normalise waves. Instead of recording into the Technics Audio recorder you just record direct into Goldwave and then increase the level to x % of peak. There are many other things you can do. Record 10 or 20 waves, make your cd, convert to mp3, then erase the waves to save space on the hard drive.

I see I forgot to answer the tags question. Artist, title, genre, album text can all be embedded in mp3s. There are 2 standards, if you buy a portable mp3 player they can display this text rather than the filenames. I have flash memory players that display ver1 ID3 and portable hard drive players that display ver 2 ID3. This information is what you see diplayed in winamp if written to mp3. Highlight a mp3 in winamp and do an Alt 3 to fill in the fields. There are many auto renaming programs that can rename lists of mp3s automatically.

Alec stated "Making your audio cd from an mp3 of your wave recording does not restore the original wave quality".....

therefore...

If information is lost forever once you convert from wave to mp3, can I assume there is no point in converting an mp3 back to a wave for recording ?

How about making copies from CD's recorded using wave files...will the copy be the same as the original wave ? Am I actually listening to wave files when I listen to a CD ?

I know I ask a lot of questions..

Thanks
Larry Hawk

yes and yes.
the only reason to make an audio cd of a mp3 is if you have no access to the original wave file or cd and want to play it on conventional audio cd players.