GM Volt Forum banner

Automatic Gain Control or Volume Control

8K views 16 replies 8 participants last post by  JO3L 
#1 ·
I have stored over 500 songs on the hard drive in my 2012 Volt. What I find really frustrating is that I am continuously adjusting the volume control to get the same volume level from songs from different artists. An automatic gain control such as commonly found with home theater systems to keep the volume level the same between regular programming and what is used for commercials would be a big help..
 
#2 ·
In the config->radio there is an "automatic volume" level, though I thought it was just for adjsuting it for road noise.
 
#7 ·
MP3gain as mentioned in the article Pete linked to will change the mp3 files (just a volume adjustment in the header), will definitely work on all devices including Volt and any Apple devices. Highly recommended. Changes made via iTunes only work in iTunes & iPod/iPad, I think they are using a tag only read by Apple devices.
 
#9 · (Edited)
The Volt's "automatic" volume control settings just make the stereo play louder as you drive faster. The Volt's automatic setting does nothing to normalize the volume of songs stored on the HD or USB devices.

You point out a basic issue with listening to music in a car. Cars are noisy places. (Even the Volt.) I agree that some sort of audio compression setting would be useful. Radio stations have used audio compressors since the 1940's to maintain even volume on the air. (Compression is the same trick that audio engineers use to make commercials sound louder than everything else.) I think that an audio compressor setting would be very useful on a car stereo... Yet I have never seen a car stereo that offered compression settings.

iTunes does have a "Normalize" feature which analyzes all of the songs in your library and attempts to adjust the volume of each song to a normalized volume. Unfortunately... It has some drawbacks. In order to normalize the songs recorded with low volume iTunes will turn down all the rest of your music a bit to match the low volume songs. iTunes turns the soft songs up slightly and it turns the loud music down slightly. It seems to keep everything at about 80% of full volume. This means MANY songs will suffer slightly in sound quality. I have definitely noticed sound quality issues with the iTunes "soundcheck" option enabled. (Some songs play with added hiss... Some even distort slightly.) But in a car... I suppose soundcheck would be helpful. But even the iTunes "shoundcheck" will not help songs with a lot of dynamics. (Soft passages mixes with loud parts.) An audio compressor would be very helpful in a car.
 
#11 ·
iTunes does not "process" the actual files. It merely tags the files with a hidden volume offset that iPods and iTunes can use to playback the files at the corrected level. (It's non destructive.)

So... You would need to BUY an iPod and plug the iPod into the car... Then soundcheck would normalize the volume for you.
 
#14 ·
I had set the auto volume to my desired level, but as stated, it simply adjusts the volume level with respect to road speed to compensate for road noise. The compression utility sounds like the ticked needed to normalize the volume levels across the mp3's I have loaded in my Volt. All the songs I have (over 800) were hand loaded CD by CD and track by track. A relatively painful and time consuming process. The next question is there a way to normalize what I have loaded already without having to perform this whole process again?
 
#15 ·
Yikes, did you really record only onto the car's hard disk, and not onto a personal computer? You would have gotten strong advice not to do so had you asked before you did this. Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to export from the Volt's hard drive.

It's best to record to computer, it's definitely a painful and time consuming process (though should be less painful than doing it on the Volt), but done right it's a once in a lifetime task. Then you can process the files with a volume normalizer, and then the files can be easily transferred anywhere, to the Volt using a USB thumb drive, any other MP3 compatible car in the future (either on CD or USB thumb drive), to any portable device, to other computers.

You do have to make some decisions on how to record to the computer, it depends how much drive space you have or are willing to add, how much time, your future plans for the material. Recording first to a non-lossy compression format like FLAC or Apple lossless is best for future-proofing, then you can convert to any other format later without quality loss, and never have to touch the CDs again. But that takes a lot of extra hard drive space, and lots of extra time since you'd be encoding a 2nd time for your portable devices and Volt (though most of that time is just letting the computer grind away unattended). For lossy compression, you have to pick type (MP3 is most universally supported, AAC has better quality at lower bit rates) and bit rate. Personally I'm fine with 192 kbps vbr MP3. Don't forget to backup in multiple locations in case your hard drive crashes, so you never have to re-rip!
 
#16 ·
Yes, stephent, I "hand loaded" all the songs manually into the Volt. I think it took about 3 weeks (not doing it all the time however) but when I had some extra time on the weekends, after work or after supper. I did not like the fact that it took so long. I would definitely no want to repeat it! When I wanted to start getting it done, rather than ask questions on the forum about it, I just read the manual and followed those instructions. It never occurred to me to copy the songs to a PC, then do them all at once. I did post on the forum once about how to back up songs I had loaded on the Volt to an external device for safekeeping. I was told that's not possible, but if it was, it could have been a way for me to normalize what's loaded.
 
#17 ·
I was driving to work this morning and I noticed the volume bar on the screen turn down, i didnt have my hand on the volume know or the steering volume control. was this the auto volume adjusting it self or..... do i have something to worry about here :S
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top