itunes volume adjustment?

[Metaltastic]

I'm sure some of you dudes have noticed that if you right-click on a song in itunes and click "get info", there's an option to adjust the volume at which it plays back; how exactly does this work? I ask because I've had some songs that were acquired from, shall we say, generous friends, and I suppose it was karmic justice that my ear drums were fucking detonated by their playback levels having been set ridiculously high (and this was on my ipod no less ), but how exactly is the software able to boost the level so much without retarded amounts of clipping? Is there a limiter put on the tracks when you enable the volume increase? Just curious if anyone knows the theory, or if there's something I've missed

 

[Sweetnothing]

I don't really know how it works on itunes ( guess it's some kind of clipper?), but if you drag those "maximized" tracks to your ipod, it's weird, you only notice them louder ( compared to other tracks) if you back off the master volume of the ipod...

 

[Metaltastic]

Not me dude, I put on "In Sorte Diaboli" and had to put the volume under the halfway mark to get it at the same level as pretty much any other modern metal album with the level at ~7/8ths

 

[Sweetnothing]

Not me dude, I put on "In Sorte Diaboli" and had to put the volume under the halfway mark to get it at the same level as pretty much any other modern metal album with the level at ~7/8ths

weird

Maybe I explained myself badly...what I meant was, those "loudened" tracks remain their max volume compared to the other "modern" tracks...but if I lowered the volume on my ipod, the loudened tracks were awfully loud, like the master volume didn't affect them at all

 

[Morgan C]

Yeah, on an iPod, if you set the volume to +100%, so double, then it'll increase the volume double the amount until the halfway mark (so at halfway volume it'll be like its set to max volume) and then pushing it past then won't do anything.

I don't know about on computers.

 

[Metaltastic]

Ok, I guess I'm not being clear enough here - I put on "In Sorte Diaboli", and the volume on my ipod was about 7/8ths up (from listening to other stuff before at a comfortable level), and proceeded to have my ears blasted out beyond belief; went into itunes when I got home to my comp and found out the ripper of the album had put the volume adjustment to +100% (yes I know, karmic justice, see OP ) So yes, it most definitely does raise the overall level, and there's no cutoff point (and yes, I also know In Sorte is a really loud album, but to have it at the same level as "The Apostasy" with the ipod at 7/8ths, for example, I had to bring the level down below the halfway point, and more importantly, this was no longer an issue once I went in and brought the volume adjustment back down for the files)

 

[spioraid]

Basically, Marcus got his ear drums blasted to infinity and beyond and wants a friggin' answer so he can swear at something.

As a general rule I keep my iTunes volume maxed and simply adjust my speakers/headphones volume. Not sure about the meta data volume increase, try as I may I'm not start enough to hack all of iTunes prefs.

 

[Morgan C]

Ok, I guess I'm not being clear enough here - I put on "In Sorte Diaboli", and the volume on my ipod was about 7/8ths up (from listening to other stuff before at a comfortable level), and proceeded to have my ears blasted out beyond belief; went into itunes when I got home to my comp and found out the ripper of the album had put the volume adjustment to +100% (yes I know, karmic justice, see OP ) So yes, it most definitely does raise the overall level, and there's no cutoff point (and yes, I also know In Sorte is a really loud album, but to have it at the same level as "The Apostasy" with the ipod at 7/8ths, for example, I had to bring the level down below the halfway point, and more importantly, this was no longer an issue once I went in and brought the volume adjustment back down for the files)

Dunno.. what iPod do you have? I have a Nano 1st gen, and that's definitely the case in mine (there's a cutoff point at 1/2way), maybe they changed it for newer iPods.

edit: actually no, that makes sense. Nothing above halfway volume actually adjusts the volume for the In Sorte song. So you brought it down and until the halfway point the volume stayed the same. So you had to bring it down to approx 7/16ths for it to match the volume of the Apostasy at 7/8ths.

Simple way to test this would just be to make a song +100% (preferably a song thats mastered quietly so you don't blow your ears) and then just adjust the volume past the halfway mark, see if that actually does anything. It doesn't on my iPod.