How to make all songs equally loud

[vital]

I have a group of songs in wave files that has been normalized to 100% using Sound Forge, but some songs are still louder than others. How do I make them all equally loud? Someone told me that I can have this done by Normalizing using RMS or using a Compressor. I have tried both methods myself and all I came out with was unequal volume changes or clipping. I am a newbie to audio editting so if someone knows how to use either method, can they explain to me the process of getting all songs to equal loudness please? Thanks!

 

[bvaleria]

Good question, 'cos we all know that LOUDER IS BETTER, and EVERY SONG ON EVERY CD SHOULD BE MAX'D OUT TO BE AS HOT AS POSSIBLE, REMOVING EVERY LAST DECIBEL OF DYNAMIC RANGE IN THE PROCESS......... right???????????

*yikes*

Bruce Valeriani
Blue Bear Sound

 

[Vurt]

shit, I've given up on loudness. Now I just try to get them to be the same softness. Any rec's for that?

 

[sonusman]

oh boy....

vital, there are mastering studios with extremely talented and experienced engineers, using some of the most amazing equipment in the world who charge anywhere from $100-300 an hour to do that, and they still battle with it!

I wouldn't even know where to begin on explaining the intricacies of doing this. A little key though, you more or less have to bring most volumes down to the lowest one in the collection to retain all the material sounding good. Trying to bring everything up to the loudest song in the collection is much harder to do and still retain sound quality and natural dynamics. bvaleria was more or less saying that in a sort of inside joke type of way.

Maybe soon you will be able to buy a tutorial CD that explains the process in detail....

Ed