Sound Check/Volume Problem

i've read in 'ipod help' in itunes that i can set all my songs to play at the same volume. i have followed the instructions (edit, preferences, playback, sound check) ticked the box and set up my ipod. but, i still have some songs that play very quietly and some that are extremely loud.
please help.....

I have the same problem.
the short term and tedius solution is to individually increase the volume (or level) on quiet tracks. you can do this to individual or groups of tracks (if you know a whole album plays a lower level. when you click on information then options, there is a volume control. Here you can increase the level of the track so it plays louder.
but i have 7000 tracks and i will never know all the quiet ones, so i am looking for a more comprehensive solution - a way to make sound check actually work...

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Sound check (volume leveling) not working newest ipod

Dear Apple community,
Thank you for your help with this problem.
I am extremely disappointed with my new iPod. I have been using iPods for 15 years. Many years ago I solved the problem with volume leveling by using a fantastic program called iVolume. I have over 25,000 songs (collected over 20 years) in my music library and I have never had a problem with the different sound levels when I play them back through my various Ipods and Iphones over the years.
Unfortunately when I recently purchased the latest generation of iPod I quickly found out that volume leveling no longer works. The discrepancy in the sound playback is most apparent when I use the bluetooth connection but is also present even when I play through the audio jack. I have tried turning sound check on and off, and have done a complete reboot of my ipod, and have not seen any difference.
Any help with this problem would be most appreciated.
Sincerely,
David Rojer
Maplewood, NJ
===
Specs:
I am using a Mac with OS X version 10.9.4.
My Itunes is version 12.0.1.26.
My iVolume is version 3.7.4.
My Ipod is model PD478LL with version 1.0.3 Mac.
===

Nevermind I worked it out. Just had to restart iTunes. Classic IT Crowd: "Have you tried turning off and on again?". Lol.

Sound check / normalization problem with matched versus uploaded tracks

I am finding that matched tracks are playing MUCH louder than uploaded tracks on my iPod. Before I started the match process, my library was normalized to an 89 dB reference level, which USED to be the audio engineering standard for recordings. The AAC tracks that Apple has matched my tracks with seem to be as much as 10 dB above this -- the difference is painful. To make matters worse, iTunes Match usually only matches portions of albums, so some of the tracks (the uploaded ones) are playing back at a reference of 89dB while the matched tracks are playing back at whatever Apple uses (my guess is @98-100 dB). My understanding of the MP3 file format is that there is no benefit to ripping to a 100 dB level. It is not like the old days of analogue tape where you could improve the signal-to-noise-ratio by recording slightly 'hot.' In an MP3 file, there is normalization information stored in the file header. I do not know about AAC files.
I have turned 'sound check' on on my iPod, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Has anyone found a way to fix this issue short of renormalizing the entire library and then re-uploading verything to the Match service? Needless to say, the original process of getting everything I owned to 89 dB was tedious in the first place and I don't want to have to redo that. If I do need to redo everyhting, does anyone know what reference level Apple uses for its matched files?

@ roebeet. Thanks for telling me that 'Sound Check' does not work in iOS 5. That is what I had found, but it's good to know it's not just me. I talked to an Apple tech support guy and he seemed to know nothing about this. He had me hard reset my iPod and then wrote it up. He was quite nice about it, and suggested I send a recomendation email to Apple.
I downloaded a half dozen of Apple's matched AAC tracks from the iCloud and ran a volume check on them, and they seem to be using levels in the upper 90 dB range, so my guess that their tracks were a full 10 dB louder than my 89 dB tracks was confirmed. What I've done to solve this is to remove all my uploaded MP3 tracks from the iCloud and from iTunes, renormalize them to 98 dB instead of 89 dB, then reimport them into iTunes and then reupload them to the iCloud. It seems to be working so far.
You are right about some of Apple's stuff being clipped. You don't need Audacity, either: digital clipping sounds so very very ugly. The Apple 256 kbs AAC version of 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You' from Led Zepplin I is clipped. There is no excuse for this. It makes me wonder how to alter a file so that it won't be matched: my MP3 version of the song is fine.
Thanks again for your help.

ITunes Sound Check (volume levelling) not working with AirPlay?

Playing music from iTunes. Just changed from cable connection to Airport Express. Now the volume fluctuates between songs. Any ideas?

go to:
iTunes
preferences
advanced
highlight the "general" tab
look at the second to last line
uncheck the box
i think that should do it for you
DY
the box is unchecked thanks for the help though

Import without Sound Check?

How can I import music without Sound Check attaching a volume adjustment to each track? I have "Sound Check" switched off in Preferences>Playback, but it still makes the adjustment when I import.
OR, how do I strip the Sound check values?
Many thanks.

Here's my problem exactly:
I have a huge library of music I have imported from CDs. They all have dB adjustments attached to them via Sound Check. (These are not adjustments made by the manual Volume Adjustment slider in the Options preference menu.)
I play all my music through Squeezebox. Squeezebox recognizes volume adjustments in iTunes.
I want to be able to use the manual slider volume adjustment but not the Sound Check volume adjustments. In fact I would like to get rid of all the Sound Check volume adjustments since I find that they badly distort the music.
If I delete music from the Library and re-add or re-import (from computer, not CD), the music still has the Sound Check volume adjustment attached.
Simplest solution would be to have the ability to delete any volume adjustment (aka dB) from songs in the iTunes Library.
I understand how to remove any manual volume adjustments but not those imposed by Sound Check.
Many thanks.

Sound Check in iTunes 10.6 is different versus Sound Check in iTunes 8.2

Hi. My OS is Windows 7 Pro-64.
I have lots of CD and I decided to convert them in an mp3 library imported in iTunes (and “manually” in an iPod Classic) with Sound Check on (either in iTunes, or in iPod). I managed it with Windows XP and iTunes 8.2 till last year. I always verified the Volume adjustment of each mp3 and the correlated hex values written in the field iTunNorm (using mp3Tag). So far I was quite satisfied of Sound Check because I use iPod like a “juke-box” (I don’t need a per album normalization).
Last year I updated to Windows 7_64 and to iTunes 10.6 and I went on importing other mp3 files (from my CDs). But, with some test, (I imported the same file using iTunes 8 on a PC and using iTunes 10 on a different PC) I realized (with a very high probability) that:
iTunes 10 apparently don't write iTunNorm tag anymore in the file mp3. I have a Volume adjustment, but with mp3Tag I can’t read any iTunNorm field with the famous ten hex values.
iTunes 10 and iTunes 8 use a different way to calculate Sound Check; Volume adjustments calculated with iTunes 10 are lower of about 0,75-1,25 dB in average against iTunes 8. But sometimes the difference may be very high (-3,5 dB or -5dB for example in iTunes 10 versus iTunes 8).
When I updated to iTunes 10, my old library has been converted into the new format iTunes 10, but the old Sound Check (calculated with iTunes 8) did not change (no new calculation). So when I add new files to the library with iTunes 10, I have a discontinuity with the old files imported from iTunes 8 as far as Sound Check is concerned: the new files sound lower in average than the old ones.
I don’t want to delete and re-import all my files in order to reset and homogenize the whole library (I’d lose all statistics and I’d waste lot of time to pass the file in iPod). And I don’t want using third part software like iVolume.
My questions:
Is it correct what I wrote at the point 1, 2, 3 stated over here and mainly at the point 2 (Different way to calculate Volume adjustments of iTunes 10 versus iTune 8)?
Did iTunes 10 stop to use iTunNorm field to write Check Sound info in mp3 files?
If not, where iTunes 10 write Sound Check info to the mp3 file and how can I read it?
What can I do to avoid the discontinuity in Sound Check values due to the use of iTunes 8 and iTunes 10?
Thanks in advance for your answers.

Assuming that one has the 'Sound Check' feature
selected in both iTunes and on the iPod, do the
volume changes take place when obtaining the audio
via the 'line-out' port on the dock connector?
For the 3G and earlier iPod's, no, Line Out is not affected by Sound Check.
For the 4G and later iPod's, yes, Line Out is affected by Sound Check.
Do some iPods work and others do not? Specifically,
will my iPod mini (2nd Gen) send the adjusted volume
through the dock connector?
I have only actually tested the 3G and 4G models, I cannot say what other models do with any kind of reliability. I would expect that the Mini's would have the Line Out to be soundchecked, but I cannot say that for certain.
Any way of using another method to bring the song
volumes into a more reasonable range?
MP3Gain and AACGain. These modify the MP3/AAC files directly, so after using them, turn off Sound Check everywhere.

Sound Check doesn't work for some podcasts?

Apologies for cross-posting, but this didn't get any replies in the Using iTunes section.
Podcasts that I subscribe to are recorded at quite different levels. This is pretty annoying when my morning playlist goes from a really quiet one to a really loud one.
It seemed that Sound Check would be the perfect solution, but not so: while Sound Check has set Volume levels for all the music tracks I checked, and many podcasts, there are quite a few podcasts that Get Info / Summary reports the Volume as "Not available." This doesn't seem to be just a display glitch: when I turn Sound Check on and off, the volume doesn't change on these tracks. As Murphy would predict, the ones that need the most adjustment don't get any
I haven't been able to work out what is different between the tracks that do and don't have Sound Check volumes. Two example podcasts that do get Sound Check volumes are Slacker Astronomy (most recent episodes) and StarDate; two that don't are Classical Music Spotlight and Writer's Almanac.
I tried converting one episode to AAC. As expected, the AAC file gets a Sound Check volume. But it's in the iTunes library Music group, not in the podcast.
Is there any way to get Sound Check to process these other podcast episodes?
iBook G4, iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Sound check is basically useless. Hasn't worked effectively on any model I've purchased. However, as others have pointed out, you can adjust the volume of a song so that your playlists don't cause public embarrassment. Simply do a control "i" on a particular song. In the "info" tab, you can increase or decrease the volume of a particular tune. However, if you make the adjustment, be sure to adjust all of the tune from that album. Otherwise, when you play the album, the song you tweaked will have a different volume from the rest of tunes on the album. It ain't a great fix... but it's better than what the programmers have done with sound check.

"Disable" Sound Check

There has been much discussion about the pros and cons of Sound Check, and some excellent details are provided about how it works and how difficult a process it is to standardize volume. Generally, I'm happy with the feature with one exception: live concerts, especially with songs that segue, like a Dead or Zappa concert. If I want to listen to the contiguous show, sometimes there are significant swings in volume between tracks. Yes, joining tracks is one option, but that creates very long "songs." I could also go track by track and manually set each song's volume to some standard, but my ear ain't that good. So my questions:
(1) After tracks have been imported and Sound Checked, is there a way to reset a certain group of songs to the original, non-varying, un-Sound Checked volume level?
(2) If not, can I re-import the concerts and somehow maintain the consistent volume level for the tracks that make up each show? Would I have to turn off Sound Check in perpetuity to do this?
Thanks for any suggestions
Dell Inspiron 8200 Windows XP

Sound Check works well on an iPod when listening through the headphones. Works on all iPods, as far as I know.
Some iPods have their 'Line Out' audio (Dock Connector) affected by Sound Check, others do not.
If may be iPod 'Generational' differences &/or Firmware differences - I do not know. The only way to determine if the Sound Check feature works via the Dock is to perform some simple tests (if you have the appropriate connections).
I determined that my 2Gen iPod mini with Firmware v1.3 does not pass Sound Checked audio via the Dock. Makes it more work to manually adjust the volume in my car (via a Direct Interface) or my home speakers.
See this thread for more information: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1683429#1683429

Is anyone else having problems with Sound Check playing tracks at the wrong volume in Album view?

I have noticed in the last few weeks that when I play an album on iTunes, some of the tracks are played at a lower volume. I am using sound check, and when I play the tracks individually from the "Songs" view they all play at the correct volume. However, when i choose album view, some of the same tracks are played at a lower volume. I have rang the support line and they couldn't tell me why this is happening. Has anybody else had this happen to them, and does anyone know a way round this?

I have problems with many of the same issues you mention with zoom on iOS8. Its not entirely clear if this is intended functionality or a number of bugs. The setting for full screen view versus window/regional view seems to not apply globally, which is insanely frustrating. Window view pops up without warning, particularly in a keyboard pop-up event.
I don't particularly liek the popup menu either, but now I HAVE to use it to constantly change from the sudden change to window focus to full screen zoom.
Some of the new filter features are nice additions, but don't seem to work well. or be performance optimized. Low-light, for example, stutters on zooming.
I would also assert that zooming in and out seems more abrubpt and less accurate.
iOS8 is definitely a decrease in usability and performance from its predecessors. Apple, please work out the bugs and get this right!

IPod/iTunes Sound Volume problems

I listen to my iPod Mini on my car radio, and used to enjoy turning the music up loud sometimes. Now I cannot GET it loud, even though I have the volume on my radio and iPod set to the maximum. For audiobooks, I can no longer hear the words clearly over the sounds of traffic. The volume on the iPod used to match the volume of the radio. Now it doesn't -- if I should flip to the radio without lowering the volume, I get hit with a blast of sound.
I think I might have done something in iTunes that is causing this. I cut off Sound Check and the equalizer. I also raised the volume using the Get Info options. It doesn't seem to have made any difference for the iPod when I updated. I still can't hear it very well through my tape adapter on the car radio.
Have I done anything mentioned above to cause or fix this problem? If so, do I need to delete everything from the iPod and re-load it?

Gary,
There is a lot I don't know yet, but I definitely managed to raise the volume by cutting off the sound check and the equalizer when importing new stuff. As a test, I can now hear the words in an audiobook, although the volume is still on maximum for my iPod and car tape player. Unfortunately the old stuff still sounds too faint. (Is this iPod actually updating?)
There is a problem with my car tape player. I haven't bought a head cleaning kit yet, but plan to do so. I connected an FM transmitter and tested the sound -- it was a lot louder. (In my area, I cannot use an FM transmitter in the city because of FM interference. No empty stations. So I either need earphones or to make the tape player work. Or a new car
I don't know yet whether it's the Sound Check or Equalizer that makes the difference. I don't think I ever used Sound Enhancer.
You can raise the volume by selecting songs, going to "Get Info" and resetting the volume bar. This seems to make it louder on the Mac speakers. I cannot tell that anything is getting through to the iPod -- I simply don't hear it yet.
I don't know yet if importing when using Sound Check does anything permanent to the volume of the song. I hope not.

Sound check & problems with iTunes startup

I recently changed my iTunes settings to allow "sound check," which normalizes the volume of the entire iTunes library. Nothing happened at first, but the next time I opened iTunes, the little now playing window said "determining track volume: 1 of 222," and iTunes and my computer froze immediately. This has happened every single time I've tried to open iTunes since. I'm kind of at a loss for what to do, because once I open iTunes, I literally can't do anything except shut down my computer. Any ideas??

I had that problem too. Maybe it works when you change your Bitrate in Itunes. My Bluetooth speakers run at 48 Khz and after the Itunes update, Itunes changed his settings to 44.1 kHz (before the update it was also 48kHz). I hope i could help you. Sorry for bad english i'm from Germany

Sound/Volume Problems

Whenever I try to adjust the volume on my ipod touch while playing a song a get a crackling noise and the slider shakes. I know it is not a problem with my earbuds because I have tried using different types of earbuds and still have the same problem. I have also tried restoring my ipod. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Message was edited by: atmtcprincess

Gary,
There is a lot I don't know yet, but I definitely managed to raise the volume by cutting off the sound check and the equalizer when importing new stuff. As a test, I can now hear the words in an audiobook, although the volume is still on maximum for my iPod and car tape player. Unfortunately the old stuff still sounds too faint. (Is this iPod actually updating?)
There is a problem with my car tape player. I haven't bought a head cleaning kit yet, but plan to do so. I connected an FM transmitter and tested the sound -- it was a lot louder. (In my area, I cannot use an FM transmitter in the city because of FM interference. No empty stations. So I either need earphones or to make the tape player work. Or a new car
I don't know yet whether it's the Sound Check or Equalizer that makes the difference. I don't think I ever used Sound Enhancer.
You can raise the volume by selecting songs, going to "Get Info" and resetting the volume bar. This seems to make it louder on the Mac speakers. I cannot tell that anything is getting through to the iPod -- I simply don't hear it yet.
I don't know yet if importing when using Sound Check does anything permanent to the volume of the song. I hope not.

2G Shuffle...So, is Sound Check my only volume adjustment option?

I have meticulously adjusted the volume of each song in my iTunes library with iVolume 1.6.1, and it works great with my 5G Video iPod.
None of these volume adjustments seem to have carried over to my new 2G Shuffle. Is Sound Check my only option here?
And if I HAVE to activate Sound Check in iTunes and my Shuffle, will it wipe out all of my track by track volume settings (which I'd like to keep intact for use on my 5G iPod)?

I have meticulously adjusted the volume of each song in my iTunes library with iVolume 1.6.1
Version 2 is over a year old.
And if I HAVE to activate Sound Check in iTunes and my Shuffle, will it wipe out all of my track by track volume settings (which I'd like to keep intact for use on my 5G iPod)?
It will keep the smae settings.
Just turn off Soundcheck on the 5G.
Incidentally, iVolume 2 ($7 upgrade from version 1.x) has been out for over a year now.
"The new adjustment method introducted with iVolume 2.0 that is based on the built-in 'Sound Check' function of iTunes solves all those problems (with the old version) and is a huge improvement compared to the previous versions of iVolume"

I have a number of apps on my Ipad2 that no longer have sound. I have checked setting on my ipad and the settings on the apps that have a settings and the sound and volume are ok. Do I have a virus in some apps?

I have a number of apps on my ipad2 tha no longer have sound. I have checked the ipad settings and the apps that have settings and all sound and volume are ok. Do I have a virus? Pandora sound is ok. It seems mostly to be games...angry birds, tap tap, and educational games for little ones. Any suggestions?

There aren't any viruses for iOS devices. Have you got notifications muted ? Only notifications (including games) get muted, so the iPod and Videos apps, and headphones, still get sound.
Depending on what you've got Settings > General > Use Side Switch To set to (mute or rotation lock), then you can mute notifications by the switch on the right hand side of the iPad, or via the taskbar : double-click the home button; slide from the left; and it's the icon far left; press home again to exit the taskbar. The function that isn't on the side switch is set via the taskbar instead : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4085

How do I make all the music in my ipod 5 the same volume? I already used sound check but it does'nt work.

How do I make all the music in my iPod the same volume because sound check doesn't work and i have all the latest firmware.

Nothing more you can do.

Sound Check/Volume Problem

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