How to level the volume with m4a/mp3 recordings and USB playback

Hi guys,

Not really a CX-5 specific question, but hoping for some advice or suggestions. Here goes: I recently copied a whole whack of music to a 8GB USB stick and am happy playing it in my CX-5. I just grabbed the .m4a files in my iTunes directory and copied them over. The only problem is the recording level of the songs is all over the place, I'm constantly turning the volume up and down to compensate. I know my iPhone automatically does the leveling, but a USB stick is dumb, it just sits there and passively provides the files to the HU (which is all I expect.) Is there some software or process that I can use to modify the volume levels while playing so that I'm not constantly adjusting? I've tried searching the net, but haven't really hit the right solution yet. Hopefully someone has already figured this out and can help! Thanks!

google search for "mp3gain". There's also an aacgain floating around. (The search for mp3gain should lead you to a description.)

garyd9 said:

google search for "mp3gain". There's also an aacgain floating around. (The search for mp3gain should lead you to a description.)

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll try that!

Here's a +1 for mp3gain, but frankly it's like a sticking plaster on the crud that is iTunes. Depending on how you obtain your music, i.e. if it's ripped CDs or purchased outside of iTunes, then you may be better off using a proper Media Management System instead of iTunes. Something like MusicBee (find via Google), which is fantastic, it's free, you can volume level your entire music collection in one go, and it uses industry standard meta tagging to label the audio files unlike iTunes.

I use mpgain too. Been using it for a while to level music for spamming over voip on certain games.