MP3GAin finding volume of your MP3 files
hello everybody in this little video i'm
going to describe a marvelous tool for determining
the actual volume of your MP3 files
before up loading them
welcome to another help video for LibriVox recorders
this is PC Phil Chenevert
with a video showing an easy way of determining
the volume level of your MP3 recordings
well that is if you're using windows
uh... it doesn't seem to work with mac
But this neat program called
p MP3 Gain
will tell you the volume level of your MP3
recordings and it will give you a recommendation
of the amount to increase or decrease
the volume to achieve the uh... desired eighty-nine
decibels
now the volume of
our recordings can vary greatly
this is a picture I took a three different
recordings I made
the top one is very puny and weak because
the waves are very small... they hover around
that middle line
one looks like it's way too high, in fact
they even have a lot of clipping right
here and here
and the last one looks like it we had normal
recording for me
well we'll check it out in a minure.
The volume that libriVox likes us to
have when we upload files is 89 decibels
or at least something
close to it let's say within four decibels
of that
anywhere from eighty six to ninety three is
acceptable I've been told
but even that isn't set in stone. eighty-nine
just gives us something to shoot at
so how do you do it: well I've recorded this particular
audio (an MP3)with audacity
and i'm going to drag it into the box,
We're going to cover this first:
first thing it tells me is that
our normal volume is 89.3
three this can be changed
it tells me the volume, right here
.. the volume is 71.7
and it tells me it's recommended a track gain of 18.1. do not
use Track Gain. This will automatically
adjust certain things inside of your recording
we don't
want to use that
Rather, to adjust this thing we're going to open up
that file in whatever editing program you
you
I use
audacity
now this is my little anemic file apparently
I will select the whole file go to
:02:36.519,0:02:38.089
Effect
then amplify
and it asks me how much to amplify
Now when you open up Audcaity, the Amplify dialog box will
will tell you the absolute
maximum that you can amplify
without clipping
Now in this case it is 18.2 ..I'm just
gonna change that two 18.1
and this means it's going to come within
one tenthth of a decibel
of clipping but it won't actually clip
click ok
now you may be able to see that this file
is much bigger
now if you were doing this for LibraVox
or if i was doing and i would export it
one more time
using the exact same file name that i used
before
which is whatever it is "low volume one"
save it in the same place
clear
the thing an see if i can drag it in here
and do it if i can't ..well it's gonna give me problems
OK, Analyze it ..AH!
i have now
increased the level to 89.3 which is
very close and very acceptable
so at that point i could
export this or upload it to LibriVox and
it would be fine
(humming)
OK, let's clear this and load another one: I call
call this
normal volume
eighty nine point one that's pretty darn close
in this case
i wouldn't do anything to it but upload
the file The next one I called "high volume"
becuse
it's kinda high volume
MP3Gain analyzes it and tells me it's 95.7decibels
let's see if i can amplify that again
95.7
(this is a little tool i think clled "magnifying
glass")
It is recommending a negative -6.0
that means it's necessary to go back and
reduce it, so that's what we're going to do
so i will open up this file in
audacity
selected it. Once again go to Effect>
amplify
and i'm gonna type in
-6
and let's see what it's going to happen here
well that certainly did reduce it that's
a nice pretty file now. Once again i'll do
the same thing i will
exported using the same name that i used before
because it's been modified
and let's see if it gets me to... track analysis
89.2
89.2
So what it recommends
will come pretty close. Now Track Gain or
negative is only in steps of one point five
decibels
however you don't have to use what they are recommending
if you're uh... volume here is showing 80
and they have something else you can you can
simply increase it by 9
and you'll come up to 89. you can
use your own estimation on these things
now these are pretty normal files but what
happens if you have clipping
or peaks?
let's see if this one works here
one of the problems with these files
with some files is that they have clipping
now clipping
is when your volume is so loud that it
exceeds the uh... the program's capability
to record it and so you lose
the bits at the top or at the bottom
you will notic that this particular farm has...
yes clipping
and the whole track has clipping in it
So MP3Gain is recommending to gain 4.5
this is the actual file
and you can see that some of my waveforms
here go
go pretty high
i'm just zooming in, that's
all
so we can see and this one here is the one
that's
that's clipping
and uh... an interesting point or aside
is, if you have trouble with a lot of clipping
you can go to View
and there is a little thing here "Show Clipping" clipping
This means as your are recording and
you have a clip, it will pop up in red
you can immediately stop and re-record that
but let's assume that you don't normally have
trouble
(shrink this back down)
if we try to amplify this file it would
not allow us to amplify it
see, it says zero, zero. you can't amplify
this file at all
So, how can we do this? well this is how i do it
i would zoom in on that particular file there
wherever it is ... here it is right here
highlight it and
uh... negative amplify it ...let's say a -4 negative four
That shrinks it right on down them
now if i may have lost may have
lost a little bit of the peaks up there
here's another one that we want to de-amplify
i'm going to zoom in going to
zoom in; and
choose that go to effect amplify and negative
uh...-3
I'm just choosing these numbers because that's about
what i would look for
next I will look at the entire file by clicking
up here
Whoops! I still have one right here
tricky tricky Phil
tricky tricky
Effect > amplify
negative
-4 (I like -4)
once again I'll go here so I can put my entire
uh... track into one thing i can see ... that's
pretty good
now let's see how much i can amplify it
i can amplify by four
and i think they recommended four so let's
try it
i still have these clicks but we'll see
see what happens here
i'm going to
export it
as "peaks" same file name
Clear it and let's see if I drop "peaks" in here what it will dowill
do track analysis
88.1 ! one
now it shows that I would still have
a clip
it says that if you amplify by 1.5 i would still havbe clip, well I don't
want to amplify any more and that is justfine with me
and if you wanna know what decibels are
well, you can ask somebody else because i'm not sure
i do know that the format used in in MP3Gain
is SPF or something it means
how does a human ear hear the sound how
loud does that sound to the human ear
uh... so it's sort of a different formula
but
it works very well
disclaimer remember this is all my opinion
and may or may not represent the views of
those people who actually know what they're
doing
uh... warranty is void if used while emersed in buttermilk
<br><br>
thank you very much
Cassette Tape to USB Converter Review | EpicReviewGuys CC
- Hi! It's Parris from Epic Review Guys,
and if you don't know what these are,
this video's probably not for you,
but if you're like me and in the corner
of a closet of your house you've got a box
full of cassette tapes, but you don't
even own a cassette player anymore,
well, this little guy
claims that it can take
what's on the tapes, digitize it,
and bring it into the modern age.
♫ Epic review guys ♫
This device by AGPtEK is like a Walkman,
if you remember those, a little,
portable cassette player.
Inside of it though there
are some computer chips,
basically a sound card that
takes the analog sound,
converts it to digital,
and then sends it out
through a USB cable,
so you can plug it into your computer,
record those files, and
then play them anywhere.
This goes for about 20 dollars.
I'll put a link to it
down below this video.
Let me show you what you get in the box.
If you remember the old Walkman,
this really looks like a Walkman.
Just a couple buttons on the top,
your USB cable, headphones as well,
so you can actually listen to your music.
Also included is a tiny little CD.
This has the software that you install
on your computer and then
a little instruction book
that I need reading glasses to read.
Now, I've got maybe 300
cassette tapes in that bin.
I brought a few of them
up here on the table,
and there is no way to record
them faster than they play
which means a one-hour tape
takes one hour to record.
You gotta go back and
split it into two songs.
this one starts here; this one ends here.
You've got to take the file;
you've got to give it the name.
If you want it to work
in iTunes or something,
you've got to put in all
the identifying information
of the name of the song, the
artist, the genre, the album.
It's a lot of work,
so I've got a few of my
songs, my tapes from the 80s,
Simon and Garfunkel,
Erasure, Gordon Lightfoot,
Ray Charles, but these
commercially produces tapes,
I can buy again.
I can buy the mp3s of them
or I could buy a CD of them,
or I can just sign up to Spotify or to
the Google Play Music,
eight dollars a month,
and listen to them all whenever I want
without having to buy them,
so these commercial tapes I'm really not
interested in going through
the time and effort,
the hundreds of hours to get them
into mp3 format on the computer.
The ones I'm interested in,
are these recorded tapes
that I did myself.
The ones I'd really
like to recover include
this one from 1987.
I was in air-traffic control
school in Oklahoma City.
Here's the device with the door open
where you put the cassette tapes in.
Play, rewind, it also has
a button on top that will
auto-switch the tape to
play in the other direction
which is handy if you don't want
to have to come and flip the tape over.
On the end we've got the volume control,
the USB port and the headphone jack.
I put in my air-traffic control lab tape
from January 30th, 1987.
Now going to hook this up to the computer,
so it installs the drivers,
and then install the software.
I have Windows 8 on my laptop
which is a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro,
but anything from XP on
up should automatically
install the drivers, so I
think it's a little more work
if you're on the Mac side.
You just plug in the
device in the USB port,
and you should get some
sounds going on here
as it installs the
driver to make this work.
Had to use my external CD drive
to take a look at this little disc.
All that's on here is an old copy
of the Audacity recording software that
I actually need to get a newer version
to work with Windows 8 anyway.
Also, the drivers, which
automatically install
and a copy of the manual,
which at least would be
easier to read than
the tiny print on here.
I downloaded and installed
Audacity version 2.0.5.
It's about a minute and a
half to go through the steps.
<br><br>
The set up is pretty easy.
It's just next, next, I agree.
Decided to make sure there's actually
some audio on that tape that's
almost 30 years old now.
Here's the little panel that you pop off.
This gives you access to put
in the two double a batteries,
then I should be able to
play the sound through this,
at least through the
headphones that they give me.
Well, amazingly, after 30 years,
there's still pretty
good audio on this tape.
Now, I was able to listen with
the little earbuds included,
but I remembered I have the
As Seen On TV Microboom,
which I can plug an audio source into,
and you'll be able to hear this.
Now, the first person
speaking is my partner
who's calling in on the radio,
acting as different
airplanes, and other centers
asking for clearance.
- [Voiceover] Williams Center
- [Voiceover] McAllister
Tower request clearance.
November five one zero three eight
to the Wichita Airport.
- [Voiceover] Active
runway, advise any changes
- [Voiceover] Active runway, three six
- [Voiceover] Stand by
- Stand by!
That's me while I tried to figure out
where all the different planes were
and where these planes could go through.
I wasn't particularly good
at air-traffic control,
so be glad I didn't choose that
as my full-time profession.
I came over here, rewound it a little bit,
and pressed play.
Came here in the Audacity
software and hit record,
and as you can see, I've got something.
Now when I go to play it back...
- [Voiceover] Active
runway, advise any changes.
- [Voiceover] Active runway three six
- [Voiceover] Stand by.
- Stand by.
So, now, I've got to export
this as a sound file,
an mp3 or some type of digital file,
and then I can send it to somebody.
I can play it on any of
my electronic devices.
I can burn it to a CD, play it in the car
if that's where I want to hear it.
Here's the file as an mp3.
I've saved it as air
traffic in my documents.
I could email this to someone.
They can listen to it.
I can pull it into iTunes
or Google Play Music.
It won't deteriorate anymore
now that it's been digitized,
and I can listen to it whenever I like.
- [Voiceover] Active
runway, advise any changes.
- [Voiceover] Active runway three six.
- [Voiceover] Stand by.
- And I found the tape
that I sent to my family
after I'd been in Japan for a few months
and wanted to share the
experience with them.
It goes along with the photo album.
Here's a little of it.
- [Voiceover] Hello again from the streets
of downtown Tokyo.
We're talking to you from
(mumbles) town called Ikebukuro.
On this first one, we're going to take you
through where we went when
we first arrived here.
Perhaps you can hear the
traffic in the background.
- And I just got done
listening to the tape
of my brother, sister and
myself singing Stand By Me
at a Karaoke bar in
Tokyo after a few drinks,
and boy I kind of wish
the fidelity of this tape
had been reduced over 30 years,
cause we sound bad as ever.
Sorry I can't play it for
you since it's Youtube.
So, if you're looking to
take a trip down memory lane,
this AGPtEK device is
pretty good, lets you listen
to your cassette tapes
and also record them
onto your computer, so
you'll have them forever.
They won't deteriorate any further.
Only 20 bucks, again we have a link
to it down below if you'd
like to check it out.
So, I've got my next few
weekends cut out for me
sorting through all of
this, deciding what to keep,
putting it on the computer, labeling it,
but at least then it's done,
and I'll have it forever.
Then the question is, what
am I going to do with these?
♫ Shopping is easy when
you know what to buy
♫ And Epic Review Guys give stuff a try
♫ What does the fox buy
♫ Nobody knows
♫ But before he goes shopping
♫ He watches our videos ♫
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