Exported MP3 volume
What’s the trick for making exported MP3s not LOUD? I’ve reviewed past posts. This is what I’ve done so far:
I turned off normalization in Edit>Preferences, and make sure it wasn’t checked when exporting the MP3. I’ve tried it several times. This didn’t work.
I added “staff” dynamics to both staffs: mp and p. The staff marked p is set to velocity 20. It’s barely audible when I play it in MS. However, when exported, it’s still very loud!
I checked the Synthesizer settings but don’t see (or understand) how to adjust exported volume here. Would I really need to do this in the Synthesizer anyway?
So what is the trick?
Comments
Indeed, it seems the normnalize option doesn't work. If you're sure you want your music to be quieter than all other audio files out there, you can always turn the amplitude back down in Audacity.
You can use the mixer to change volume also for exported MP3s.
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/mixer
(Edit) Sorry, but I just noticed that this only works between different instruments, it always normalizes to the loudest instrument.
In reply to You can use the mixer to… by Mr Fox
Good idea! In the Mixer, I turned down the Master Gain to -70.00dB. Upon playback in MS, I can barely hear the score. But when exporting as MP3 (I tried with Normalization both on and off) it's the same old loud playback.
Marc, are you implying this is a bug in the latest version? I've been able to mix tracks before with instruments at different volumes, and the MP3s exported just fine (albeit they are usually louder than I want them to bee).
In reply to Good idea! In the Mixer, I… by darkstream
The inability to turn off normalization is a bug as far as I know. but I'm still not really understanding why you'd ever want such non-standard audio. It's just going to annoy anyone you share the file with when they have to turn up their speakers to hear it as they like, as they have their speakers set the way they like, and it's not really your job to tell them how loud music should be. Normalization is the industry standard for good reason.
In reply to The inability to turn off… by Marc Sabatella
What makes you think everyone wants
1. to create standard audios ?
2. share their audios ?
Many of us are exporting audios for their own usage.
Right now, I am learning a the bass part of polyphonic play. I thought exporting it to .mp3 would allow me to listen to it while driving for instance. So I set all parts but the bass one to a lower level. This works very fine in the application but totally fails when exporting.
In reply to What makes you think… by Hubert78
I’m confused - are saying you have used the mixer to make all parts except the bass quieter, but when you export to mp3, those mixer settings are ignored? That should not be happening - that is not what normalization is. Normalization is only about the overall volume of the entire score, not the relative volume of individual instruments.
If you have a specific score where exporting the audio changes the relative volume of the instruments, that’s not normalization - that’s just a bug. But not one I've seen before - when I export an MP3 file it definitely honors my mixer settings. So please start a new thread and attach the score in question so we can check it out and advise further. Be sure to say what version of MuseScore also.
In reply to I’m confused - are saying… by Marc Sabatella
> are saying you have used the mixer to make all parts except the bass quieter,
Yes
> but when you export to mp3, those mixer settings are ignored?
They are not ignored but the normalization comes into play and the overall result is far from what I hear inside Musescore
In reply to > are saying you have used… by Hubert78
The normalization should do nothing different from changing the volume. If you find the player on which you are listening to your mp3 is set too loud, simply turn it down. Again, the point is to make the volume the same as other audio you listen to on that same mp3 player, so if it’s set too loud for this file, it’s probably too loud on all of them, so you’d want to turn the volume down anyhow.
If you are seeing something that can’t be addressed with the volume control on your mp3 player, again, that would be something else, so please start a new thread and attach your score so we can understand better.
In reply to The normalization should do… by Marc Sabatella
Ok, will check. Thanks for the fast answers
Normalization shouldn't make your audio "loud" either. It should just use the available headroom,
so that that loudest part of your entire track ends up at -1 db. Actual loudness would be achieved by squeezing the dynamic range through compression or limiting but normalization should neither compress nor limit the audio. (Still it may be desirable to not not normalize audio in rare cases.)