EDM volume

[avsphan]

Noob question:

I've been using my EDM for a week now, sounds great, reaches just about as far as I want/expected, but I don't know if it is normal to have to turn up the receiving unit as far as I do. I have the laptop turned down in the 30% range, and don't want to start overdriving the tx.

When I listen to a licensed station I have the volume between 10-15, to hear the EDM at the same "level" I turn it up to 22+. I knew it would be quieter, but wasn't expecting to have to go up almost double. I'm also starting to notice some static in between songs since I'm up so loud on the receiver.

Thanks for any advice.

[Guest wbottomley]

So... what's your question?

[Surfing4Dough]

You might want to use a program like Audacity to increase the gain of your MP3s.

[avsphan]

The question is: Is that normal to have to turn up that much?

I took all my MP3's through Audacity and raised them, then through MP3 gain to level them.

[Guest Don Gillespie]

you may be experiencing static from other frequencies, have you done a channel surf to see if your station is overlapping with any other stations?,\ may cause static, how is your antenna? if not properly installed this may cause static, do you have an inline volume control from the computer to the EDM? may cause static if you don't.

[LOR Staff]

Commercial stations use something called 'Compression'. That's not the same compression you may be familiar with in the digital world.

In broadcast terms, that means moving the 'quiet' parts of a song to be nearly as loud as the loudest parts, and making the loudest parts the absolute loudest they can be without distortion. For example, lets say a part of a song has a vol level of 1, while the rest of the song is more like 8. (Yes, we should actually be doing this in dB, but lets not confuse the issue)...

A broadcast station will 'compress' that volume differences such that the soft level is 8 and the rest of the song is 10.

They do this because most people associate 'Louder' with 'Better'. It's the same thing with TVs in the store: People think brighter is better so the mfgs set their defaults to eye-burning brightness levels.

The best thing you can do is ensure you have enough volume to get over any static. IE, so the person listening doesn't have to turn up the radio SO loud they hear background static. That means tweaking the volume input to the transmitter, and possibly setting the level of the MP3 correctly.

I think there is a 'compression' plug in for Audacity, but my experiences with consumer-level compressors has been less than stellar.

[avsphan]

Gonna try to re-gain them in Audacity, did some checks to make sure it was just the show coming through too quiet...and it was. Thanks for the advice!