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DIY CD Compression?

When we take long road trips, I like to load up my cars CD changer with classical music. On the pieces with more dynamic range, it is impossible to hear the quiet passages without cranking up the volume to the point that the loud ones are deafening.

I usually rip copies of my CD's to prevent damage to the originals in the car. So it maybe it would not be too much trouble to take an extra step or two to process the files to limit the dynamic range before I burn the copies.

Can anyone suggest a program that would allow me to do this?

Ken
kenyonbm
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,261 posts
 
What type of audio system is in your car. Some have automatic volume controls that adjust to the in-car noise level. Check you owner's manual.
kenyonbm OP
141 posts
 
I got the Audacity as a free download and it does have the compression ability I was after (and a lot more). It did take about 3 minutes to process a 11 minute track, so a 75 minute CD might take 25.

I am going to need a faster computer to make this work.

Protools looks to be a lot faster but the software/hardware package is overkill for me. I'm going to check out audition to see if it is any quicker.

Thanks for the tips!

Ken
djohnson54
396 posts
 
Ken,

Yes, it can take a significant amount of time. On the other hand, if there ARE any of the ripping tools that do this automatically, they're going to have to go through the same process and will probably be slow too.

Regarding you're earlier question about Roxio: I haven't used it in a while but a lot of these tools offer the ability to do normalization on the fly. This is not the same as what you are trying to do. Normalization attempts to make all of the tracks approx. the same loudness so you don't have to keep playing with the volume every time a track changes. Dynamic range would be unaffected which is what you need compressed.

Good luck with the search.

Dick
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