Music, CD,s Recording Advice

I feel about a dumb as a box of rocks on this subject, but here goes and I'm going try wading right in. As some of you may know I've been working on a pontoon houseboat for quite some time and it's finally nearing completion. Anyhow we wanted to get rid of the clutter of boxes of CD's on board our boat. So we purchased a radio for it that will play music from a thumb drive plugged into the back of the unit. Now here's where I need advice, help, suggestions, or maybe even a program which is hopefully free. Many of the CD's are old if that matters any but they are purchased studio recorded Cd's I've acquired since the format first became available. But the recording levels are all over the place and can make you crazy when listening to full random play. At home I can bear that though it's inconvenient with a remote and adjust the volume up and down as needed. In the boat this would be a real PIA to deal with though. Does anyone know a way as I run them through my computer to load them on a thumb drive that I can level out the recording levels so full random play in the boat won't be such a ear-eventful experience of listening levels.

Bump.
Bamby, i was searching for another old thread and noticed this one didn't have any replies. Sorry about that. I missed it.
I used to have that problem back when I made CD's of various artists. Since I got an iPhone and use the ipod part along with itunes to load my old CD's onto the ipod, I have not noticed the varrying volume issue you mentioned. Heck, I even forgot I used to have that problem.
Did you find a way around the issue or are you still looking for a solution?

Thanks for taking to time to ask Doc. My this has been some time ago and a lot has happened since. I ended up using MS Media player for uploading the CD’s to the computer. It worked ok for the most part and got-er-done though I’d like to have had some custom options available.

I’d managed to upload apx. 300 CD’s in their full format that we really liked without a hiccup. Then and this is where the problems began, we have a bunch of other CD’s that only have selective cuts on them that we really like and wanted to upload. This function of selective choosing cuts in media player is a royal PIA because as soon as the CD is inserted it starts ripping it faster than I could begin editing it.

Fought this issue through and went back in and deleted cuts it managed to rip anyway from the files until I got down to about the last dozen or so CD,s. I remember it well it was a Jason Aldine CD that I wanted to skip but the better half had to have a couple cuts of off it.

Did you know even when your technically off line and ripping CD’s media player somehow reaches online somewhere and get’s the covers etc. and includes them in the file with the corresponding CD. Well it does of did and most of mine are old and I know album covers weren’t embedded into the format.

Anyway when I inserted the Jason Aldine CD in all hell broke loose with my anti-virus protection program. It notified me it had captured a Trojan and it was going to quarantine it for me. Well ain’t this fine and dandy because it was actually quarantining a driver needed for my CD rom drive. So off I go to try to bail my driver out of my virus protection program.

Well when I prodded my viral ware as to what it’s problem was and would it just capture and kill the offending Trojan and release my driver it was stern in informing me it couldn’t cleanse it of the Trojan and I was forbidden to ever ever have my driver back again and it was quarantined forever.

Well that’s been about six months ago and I’ve been driverless since and have unable to find another to make her work and function again. But I guess it really no longer matters about the driver because the whole blame computer puked about two weeks ago when it woke up with what may have been the Black Screen of death. Yep shut her down the night before everything’s fine and turned her on the next morning and she’d lost everything, just a black dumb dead screen looking back at me.

PS sorry about the rambling off topic

It takes a little work, but you can get an MP3 editor like Audacity.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

After you rip your CD songs to MP3, open them in Audacity and adjust the amplitude of the song to the desired level. If you adjust every one of your MP3s to the same level, you'll have level and consistent playback with no need to jog the volume up and down.