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» 512MB Pen Drives for VFM7 - $44 With Lanyard!
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Friday, February 04, 2005
Using AudioGrabber with Car MP3 TransmittersIn testing the VFM7 MP3 player/transmitter, I noticed a little too much overload-sounding distortion. Quiet passages were actually very good, no hiss or buzz, but louder things sounded like they were maxing something out along the way.I also noticed what is a common problem for me: riding the volume control to maintain the relative sound levels between tracks. I have the controls on the wheel, but it still stinks. Both of these problems, and I'm sure a lot more, are solved by the excellent, free, AudioGrabber. It's free, it's easy to use, it's got good documentation, it's flexible, and it has exactly the features I needed, namely dynamic range compression and average level normalization. Amazingly enough, even though it's come uo in the forums, I can't find a donate button anywhere on the site. Just a nice guy, I guess. Dynamic range compression is basically reducing the difference between quiet and loud passages. In the car, this is necessary to move the quiet stuff up off the noise floor of your engine, tires, and open exhaust. It's different from normalization, where the highest sound level in a track is set to one and everything adjusted relative to that. Compression, used carefully, can help the sound in your car immeasurably. Average level normalization, instead of setting the peak to the highest sample, sets it to the highest portion of a song. The effect is that the volume feels roughly the same from track to track across different albums and artists. Many mp3 encoders have normalization, but it just sets the peaks to the same level, and that's not always a simliar perceived volume. 
So I would use AudioGrabber now in my car regardless of my player, just for those two things. But with the VFM7, it really does cure all the problems I had with mine. I reduced my average level for normalization to about 37, add some compression, and now I get no pops, I have no need to crank quiet tracks and listen to hiss, and in essence I've only lost maybe 3db of absolute dynamic range with the normalization because it's about half the regular average sound level on most of my tracks. Depending on your receiver, your settings may be different. But I'd bet, since my 740i has perhaps the worst radio ever, that my settings will work for just about any car. All this work really begs the question of whether saving some money on equipment is worth all the time spent getting it to work right. For me, no, it isn't. But it's fun, and you shouldn't have to, since I did it for you. Also, my other transmitters have had very similar problems, like the Aireo, that crummy Samsung Napster deal, the Anydrive, and the iGo, so I'm sure these problems exist for more people, and now they're solved the best I can. So get your VFM7, Renamer, AudioGrabber, and some cheap pen drives, and keep some music with you for a rainy day drive.
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Gadgetize: Using AudioGrabber with Car MP3 Transmitters