What is "Determining Song Volume?"

And why does it take so long?
I want to update a restored iPod on iTunes 7, but it's spending forever going through 4,000 some songes to "Determine Song Volume." I have not seen iTunes do that before.
Is there a way to make it stop?
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

iTunes "determins song volume" so that it can play back all songs with about the same volume. To do this is it has to go through all your music and determin the volume of each song.
You probably never noticed this before since it is quite fast doing just a few songs at a time (the way most of us add music to our libraries). Unfortunately iTunes 7 aparently goes through all songs and determins the volume again (probably becuase there was a problem with this is some earlier versions of itunes)
You can make it stop by turning off "soundcheck" in the playback preference pane.

Similar Messages

Always "Determining Song Volume"

I've just updated to iTunes 7.3 and have noticed that it seems iTunes now Determines Song Volume for Podcasts as well as tracks? Maybe it did that before? ... But it sure has dragged to a crawl for the first time ever and is really focusing on determining the song volume of the podcasts that just downloaded. Long podcasts = big files = very slow.
I've shut off Sound Check in the preferences ... it still is Determining Song Value when I fire iTunes back up. It won't not do it ... unless I can quickly click the "x" button in the display window at the top of the app.
Anyone else seein' this? Tips?

Ever since updating iTunes whenever I launch it all of my songs and podcasts go through 'determining song volume' EVERY TIME!! What is up with that?
I have deselected sound check...not sure if that will do the trick or not. But after reading the above post, I'm not hopeful.
As I type this the VERY SLOW song volume thing drags on.................

FIX - iTunes Crash while "Determining Song Volume"

I figured out how to make iTunes stop crashing on "Determining Song Volume". This may not fix it for everybody, but if you have a Dual-Core processor, it's worth a try.
iTunes' SoundCheck scanning process (aka determining song volume) is not fully thread-safe. When it's trying to scan several songs, it launches each one in a separate thread. On a dual-core or dual-processor machine, this means that the scans happen simultaneously. My guess is that the decoding/scanning is perfectly fine, but the bit where it's writing the updated information into iTunes database is not. And so it eventually hits a case where both threads try to write at the same instant and bam, crash. Probably because a lack of mutex locking on the database routines.
Anyway, if you're experiencing this problem, and have dual-cores, try this:
1. Start iTunes. If it starts scanning immediately, hit the X icon to the right of where it says "determining song volume" to make it stop and not crash.
2. Go to preferences and turn off SoundCheck. Also turn off "Use soundcheck when burning CDs" or something like that.
3. Open the Task Manager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC). Click the Processes Tab.
4. Right click on the iTunes.exe process, and select "Set Affinity..."
5. You should have checkmarks beside CPU0 and CPU1. Turn off the CPU1 checkmark.
6. Back in iTunes, turn on SoundCheck again. It'll start determining song volume, and this time, it should not crash.
If this works for you, then you can make it semi-permanent with this little program: http://www.activeplus.com/us/freeware/runfirst/
It's called RunFirst.exe and what you do is to put a copy of it in the iTunes directory. Then change the shortcut you use to start iTunes to have the full path to runfirst.exe followed by the normal path to iTunes.exe. SO change the shortcut's properties to look like this:
"C:\Program Files\iTunes\RunFirst.exe" "C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe"
This makes the shortcut launch RunFirst, which launches iTunes with the CPU Affinity forced to one core only.
That should fix it for a lot of people. It worked for me. So enjoy!
Apple can fix this in future revisions of iTunes, if somebody tells them to check that all the bits are totally thread-safe, because clearly that's where the issue lies.

Sarah: Sound Check (and other volume leveling schemes) usually do lower the volume. There's lot of good technical reasons for this, but the basic gist of it is that songs which are too loud cause distortion. If you want louder music, your best bet is to leave the Sound Check on and crack up the volume knob on the speakers instead. Most audio sources are actually too loud to begin with, because people think loud = better, but this ruins the dynamic range and you don't get the full effect of the audio. CD's really would sound just as good as live performances if it were not for this.
Sound Check doesn't actually change the song's volume itself. It just inserts a tag saying what the volume of the song is. On playback, the volume is auto adjusted to conform to an optimum level. ReplayGain works in much the same way, but it is much more precise. But anyway, turning off the Sound Check option really does turn the effect off. Sound Check doesn't permenantly change the music to begin with.
My suggestion is to not use the volume slider on the computer, but to leave Sound Check on, and to instead simply turn up the volume on the speakers. Using the speaker volume won't distort the music in the same way that using a volume slider on the computer will. I could explain why, but it's really technical, having to do with amps and dynamic range and so forth. You're probably not that interested.
But if you are interested, go over to the HydrogenAudio forums and start reading. More technical gibberish there than you can shake a stick at.

Determining song volume

I have the latest version of iTunes for Windows Vista, and when I download a song, or play a song, the info bar at the top runs a process called "determining song volume". when ever that runs, iTunes stops working, and shuts down. then Vista loads a help page, and tells me to get a download that fixes this problem, but the link takes me to download the newest version of iTunes (which I already have). can anyone offer any help?

You need to disable the Sound Check function, which makes all the songs play at the same level. This is probably taking too much memory, and then crashing iTunes.
Sound Check can be disabled in Preferences > Playback Tab > untick "Sound Check" > OK.
This should fix your problem.
Mitch

"Determining Song Volume"... then shuts down

I just bought a new computer with Vista, imported my library from my external hard drive (which I used to store all my music for my old computer) and my itunes shuts down after "Determining Song Volume" on the first few podcats. Any suggestions??

You need to disable the Sound Check function, which makes all the songs play at the same level. This is probably taking too much memory, and then crashing iTunes.
Sound Check can be disabled in Preferences > Playback Tab > untick "Sound Check" > OK.
This should fix your problem.
Mitch

ITunes Feezes while "Determining Song Volume"

I downloaded a series of podcasts (35) as usual. When downloading stopped iTunes beagn "detrmining Song Volume" which generally is only seen when nothing is playing. It normally takes a few seconds depending on number of downloads. It froze after 3-4 podacsts. It would not close. ContAltDel idicated program notb responding and "end task" took some time. This happened a number of times. I went to Grogram Add?delete and ran"repair PGM". It repeated same sequence and I closed by "end Task". I downloaded iTunes from Apple website and the same thing occurred. What now?

I have the same issue. I deleted the track manually that iTunes was attempting to determine the volume of, but that doesn't help.
I have force-restart my computer every time.

Determining song volume crashes iTunes 7.7

Hi there! I just submitted this as a bug report. Does anyone have any workarounds, or fixes? Thanks!
After determining the volume of about 300 or so songs, Windows reports "iTunes has stopped working". No particular kind or group of files is affected - by restarting iTunes, it can usually check the volume of the song that had appeared to make it crash. However, after another 300 or so songs, it crashes again before it can finish the entire library.
This is on the x64 edition of Windows Vista Ultimate.
The problem details are:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: iTunes.exe
Application Version: 7.7.0.43
Application Timestamp: 487517e1
Fault Module Name: iTunes.exe
Fault Module Version: 7.7.0.43
Fault Module Timestamp: 487517e1
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 004e9444
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 5129
Additional Information 1: fd00
Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
Additional Information 3: fd00
Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
I thought I should also mention that I have tried to remedy the problem by removing all traces of iTunes and Quicktime, then reinstalling. I also tried installing Quicktime from the standalone exe. Creating a fresh user account did not help either.

I also have the same problem. I have iTunes 8 and when it's says it determining the volume on my podcasts it stop and tells me the iTunes has stopped work. There go my 78 podcasts!!

ITune crashes while determining song volume

After I told iTune to import new songs, it started to determine the song volume. After about 300 or so songs (out of about 2000) it just crashes and ask me to send a report. When I restart it it just starts to determine the song volumes and crashes again after about the same number of songs. Any suggestions how to correct this problem?

Well, yes, as Spock says, "Live Long and Prosper!.
Using Spotlight, I tracked down anything that vaguely had to do with iTunes, everywhere I could find them and mercilessly deleted them. I also renamed the iTunes Music Folder and moved it to the desktop. I then took my 'old" iLife 6 CD and reinstalled everything. I refused any updates. I then opened iTunes, in preferences/playback I made sure Sound Check was checked and then clicked "add to library and added chunks of about 100 to 250 songs at a time until I got them all in. There were no problems. I suspect that some buffer get overloaded.
Nick

'Determining Song Volume' crashes iTunes in Vista

Hello all. I have just purchased a new Vista machine, and all updates are installed on it. My first app to install was iTunes but when I drag & drop music into the library, iTunes crashes. This also occurs whenever I restart iTunes. I have figured out that when I disable cound check in the prefs, the issue disappears. Like I say, it's running on a clean install machine, but I've re-installed three times now with no success. Cany anyone help?!?

I also have the same problem. I have iTunes 8 and when it's says it determining the volume on my podcasts it stop and tells me the iTunes has stopped work. There go my 78 podcasts!!

ITunes 8.01 Crashes while "Determining Song Volume"

Any fix for this? This happens every time I open iTunes.

It seems most likely taht one of your files is upsetting iTunes, although this is more commonly seen with Gapless playback calculations.
I guess you have checked the sound check checkbox in your playback preferences. I am not sure if unchecking would make any difference.
But I think you will probably need to check your content files for problems. The following article on troubleshooting crashes includes instructions for doing this, although it is aimed at gapless playback.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1717

IPod wont stop "Determining Song Volume"

I haven't had the "Sound Check" button selected ever. I've checked 3 times since this started and it still isn't checked. How can I stop this from happenening whenever I connect my iPod?
Thanks for the help!

To turn off your iPod: press and hold the "PLAY/PAUSE" button for a few seconds.
If it doesn't work, then reset your iPod a few times (click here), click around on the menus a bit, then try shutting it off with the play/pause button.
-Kylene
If any post helps or solves your issue, please mark it that way accordingly. Thank you for helping the boards!

ITunes is automatically determining audio volume on my files

Whenever I open iTunes it begins automatically "determining audio volume" for my podcasts. I don't know why it's doing this. When I click on the x in the window it stops, but if I close iTunes and reopen it, it starts again. How can I make iTunes stop doing this permanently?

I have the same problem with automatically "determining song volume" every time I launch iTunes, and it's with over 40 GB of music, a real pain in the neck. I believe it might have something to do with how you import songs from a cd or how you burned a cd and reimport them. If you burn a cd with the "use soundcheck" option, this might be the culprit, but I don't know how to adjust the whole library to forget soundcheck altogether. I tried selecting all tracks, get info, and setting them all to 0 under options for volume adjustment, but that didn't work. Anyone else have any ideas?

Determing Song Volume

HI Folks
Just updated iTunes and now in the window it says "Determining Song Volume: Analyzing xxx of 2165: Song Name"
I've never noticed iTunes doing this on previous updates.
Can anyone let me know why this is necessary?
Thanks
Clone PC, 1st Gen iPod Shuffle (v 1.1.5 software) Windows XP

Sounds like you have "Sound Check" turned on.
iTunes: About Sound Check
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61655

ITunes 12.1 freezing upon launch due to "determining audio volume"

My (Late 2011) MBP running Yosemite is freezing when I launch iTunes. It is 12.1, the latest version. Upon launch, it says "Determining Audio Volume" and is on the first of my several thousand songs. The spinning wheel eventually pops up and I am forced to forced shut-down my mac by holding the power button. I can't delete iTunes as it is "required by the OS" and I can't open it and go to the preferences to uncheck "soundcheck" because it freezes the entire mac upon launch.
Anyone experiencing the same issue or know what might fix it?
Thanks

I had the same problem, but I think I've found a cure.
Even though Sound Check was disabled in preferences, iTunes would insist on Determining Audio Volume everytime it was launched. But there is also a 'Sound Check' preference in the Burn CD dialogue.
To turn it off you need to select a playlist, hit the Burn Disc button (bottom left) select Audio CD as the disc format and un-check 'Use Sound check'
Then you must hit the 'Burn' button (if you don't it will not remember the new settings) You can then cancel the burn by clicking the X in the itunes player window.
This has cured the problem for me

"Determining Audio Volume" question

Hello,
While fooling around on iTunes, I somehow changed a setting so that the rectangular window at the top of the screen, which normally shows the song being played, the status of syncing, etc., now shows the message, "Determining Audio Volume" and appears to be running through all the songs on my Mac. I can click the "X" to the right of the window and that stops the activity for the time being, but the next time I open iTunes, it starts all over. I can't figure out how to stop this activity.
Any suggestions?

Let it finish? How many years should I wait? iTunes is totally disabled by this "feature". If I stop the Determining, the program freezes and I have to force quit. If I try to select a song while it's doing this, the same. I have un-installed and re-installed and gone back to prior versions and used previous libraries and yada yada ad nauseum. Why is support so poor? My impression is that this application just ties itself in knots that cannot be untangled. I have no videos, no podcasts, no state-of-the-art stuff, but I do a lot of live recording (mp3s and WAV files) and want to archive and manage it in iTunes (what alternative do I have?), and it seems utterly deficient for that task. Whenever I try to play anything on the computer, the audio defaults to iTunes, and that's the end of that. I've tried Audacity, but it's slow and cumbersome and doesn't burn audio cds.
Why is iTunes so problematic, and why do we have to wade through thousands of discussions with helpful titles like "help" to look for solutions? I've had Macs since 1984, and this is just sad.

What is "Determining Song Volume?"

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