re: volume differences

top of the day to you all

quick question, this is my first foray into the world of mp3 and media players of any sort, but i wanted to stay away from the ipod monster, anyway, a few quick questions.  i have a 30g zune and i think it is the best.  however, i have noticed that between some of the albums i put on this thing, the volume level is a variable not a constant.  i havent messed with the devices volume level at all.  should i have ripped my music under the "lossless" category instead of the variable bit rate, not that i am sure what the difference is.  the other question,  i have a few concert dvd's which i love, is there a way to put them on there, or maybe just the audio, just the songs?   thanks in advance and these forums have been a great help.  i appreciate you all.  come check me out,  the soulfetcher

 

doug

I don't know if this will help you, but between some of my older CDs and some newer ones, I definately notice a difference in the volume. They are ripped with the same settings, so I assume the difference is in the quality of the original recording and how it transferred to the digital format. Analog>Analog>Digital versus Digital all the way for example.

I have a lot of concert DVDs on my Zune, that's one of my favorite things. I use cucusoft software to copy them and it works great for me. Once on my Zune they play under the Videos menu like any other video.

How astute an observation. Actually it is correct though. Due to record companies being run by assholes (not really, but kind of) there has been a gradual increase in record volume over the years. This volume increase has come at a decrease in quality (digital music works based on incremental differences between each moment of sound.) So new CDs are much louder (compare a disc released in 1992 with one released in 2008) and sound shitty. As far as normalization goes, I think that it would be limited to the disc when rip and encode unless you are using absolute values. If you do it based on the CD profile you will still have a major difference.