Increase the Volume of Audio Files with Vloud
Like most people, I have a fairly large collection of music in a digital format. The only problem is that very often I get songs that are at different volume levels. This is irksome because then I have situations where one song is really loud and the next one is very soft.
To solve this problem, I usually standardize the volume of all my audio files. To do this, I use a little program called MP3Gain. But if you do not want to add to the endless list of software installed on your computer, you can opt for getting the job done with a browser-based application. One such tool is Vloud.
Vloud allows you to upload any mp3 or wav file to the site and change its volume according to your preferences. Using the site is easy. Select the desired volume you want your file to have from the options light, loud, louder, and loudest. Then, upload the original file and wait for the changes to take place. Once the file is ready, you can listen to it online or download it to your hard drive.
The site is not without its limitations. One of them is that the uploaded file can be a maximum of 10MB. This is not a problem if you’re uploading individual songs but won’t work if you want to use a concert recording for example. Another thing I didn’t like was that the volume settings were too vague. A ‘loud’ setting does not really tell me how my file is going to sound after conversion. So I’d have to keep trying different settings till I found one I liked.
Overall though, Vloud is quite useful especially for people who do not want to be burdened with things like bitrates, decibels, and frequencies. Plus, for those who only require to change file volume once in a while, using an application like Vloud makes more sense.
What do you think of Vloud? Is it worthwhile using a web app on your audio files? What other similar tools do you know of? Let me know in the comments.
Update: The Vloud service has been discontinued and the website is now displaying a parked page with advertisement. I suggest you use the previously mentioned MP3 Gain to change the volume of your mp3 files.
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I use a command line program called normalize.exe, it only works on .wav files, so I use Cowon’s Jet Audio to convert my .mp3 to .wav, run the normalize and then re-encode the .wav using LAME to convert to .mp3
I use Aimp2 to play my music and it has an option to auto normalize the sound volume. It works pretty ok I think.
this is not a normalization function. vloud is much more than that. there are limitations we purposely imposed for ease of use. mp3 only, 10mb limit, etc. however the actual DSP is upsampling from mp3 to 32bit 88.2 WAV then processing and then reconverting to mp3. we are about to release the hi-res version, which, if I were WAVES, I’d be concerned abt. It sounds wicked.