Undoubtedly we have all known the frustration produced by corroborating that our video or audio files (mp3, flac, aac, avi, mpeg, mp4, etc.) have a different loudness and this is noticeable when playing them!

Why do the videos or audio files have different loudness?

The reasons can be many. Since the time they were recorded, since in recent years the so-called “volume war” was generated by music producers.

When sound louder is synonymous with having better sound

And this was because it was discovered that if an audio sounds a little louder, the human ear can perceive it as sounding better.

Indeed, exhibitions were carried out where people (including musician and music professionals) were made to listen to an aido and then they were made to listen to one that had 8% or 10% greater loudness … and the + 95% perceived that the second (which only sounded louder) sounded “better”.
So many products, almost all of them, especially dance music, por, rock, etc. They began to sacrifice the dynamics of the music and gave a little boost to the volume of their productions. But this was a little bit at the beginning, but when everyone went up a little bit, others went up higher and thus began a career that is known as the volume war.

What is the dynamics of music?

Much music with all intentionality has low volume passages and contrasts with others of high sonority. This gives expressiveness to the music, it is another resource to be able to transmit sensations, perceptions, feelings, atmospheres, etc.

The volume war ended that dynamic, making the whole song sound all the time at maximum volume, without reaching distortion. In other words, the only limit was that: the distortion.

Give it all the volume, staying on the edge of distortion.

Then, we will understand that the time in which it was recorded has a lot to do with the loudness of our music or our video.

There are also technical elements. The combination of bitrate, with bipt depth and sample rate, among others (equalization, etc) are other elements that help make each recording have its own loudness.

When having different loudness becomes a problem

Previously, if we listened to a song from a vinyl record or watched a video from a video cassette, to listen to another, it was necessary to change the vinyl record or the video cassette … and those seconds of pause did not make us perceive the difference in loudness that they possibly had both recordings between them.

Now, in the digital age, with playlists, a song begins just after the previous one ends, just as it happens with videos. And the end of one recording is so close to the beginning of the next one, that we perceive the difference in loidness clearly … and we don’t like it.

Mp4Gain is the software (the only one) that can normalize video and audio files of the most popular formats. You can even normalize and convert them at the same time. That is, if you have a music video and want to convert it to mp3, you can normalize and convert it in one step. Even if you have a flac and want to convert it to mp3 or if you have a vi and want to convert it to mp4 and in the process normalize it, quite with the click of a single button.