Volume Control

[cgm55082]

I know this question has been asked before, but I'm wondering if it has been addressed or resolved yet?  I'm wondering if I can limit the volume on my Ipod 5.5 so that it stops at -0?  Once it goes past that (up to +6) and the volume turns pink, the sound becomes distorted.  This may not seem like a major issue, but it's a constant hassle to try keeping the volume from going into the pink zone, especially when driving down the street.

Any suggestions/solutions?  

[MarcGuay]

Any suggestions/solutions?  

Snotty:  Focus on driving your gigantic, dangerous hunk of steel instead of messing around with tiny digital devices?

Less-snotty: I think it was decided that it's up to the user to control the volume, not the player.

The truth: Maybe not, see over here http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/6555.

A long discussion of this feature is here in case you missed it: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=7053.0.  Includes some work-arounds involving pre-cut.

[TexasRockbox]

I don't know if this will help: When ripping .ogg files using CDex, I initially keep an eye on the volume level of the CD, if the level is consistently below 90%, I'll restart ripping and normalize to 95%.  Older CD (mid-80s, early 90's) can and do remain consistently below 90%.  Some of my oldest CDs are *incredibly* quiet and the volume maxes out below 70% -- a significant number of decibels below the norm today.

If practical, maybe re-ripping some of the collection will help.

In doing the ripping this way I find my Rockbox levels remain reasonably consistent and the volume in the config file is -34 or so with headphone listening.  That way I use less of the 5.5G functions and theoretically less power.  If in the car the headphone jack is being used as a pseudo line-out, maybe the volume is better controlled by the car unit being fed.   That is, just crank up the Rockbox just enough so that the car stereo can take over and leave the 5.5G Rockbox player alone.  Thats what I do when (gasp!) I use a cassette adapter because my car stereo has no line-in whatsoever.

I'll typically leave live albums or gapless albums alone and hope for the best.  In some cases I've repurchased new remasterings so that the volume level is contemporary.  There is some sonic trickery being practiced today in CD engeering  to make CD's "louder" so sometimes fidelity suffers.

[Llorean]

Or, you could just use replaygain, which allows you to level the apparent volume without altering the volume of the actual rip.

[Chronon]

While Llorean already gave you the best option, IMO, I will also throw in that you could introduce a precut of greater than 6dB to try to interdict the clipping that you get when you turn the volume up past 0dB.

[XavierGr]

Or, you could make a configuration file that alters only the volume setting to 0db.
That way when you want to be sure to have maximum volume without distortion you just have to select the configuration file (e.g) in the root folder.

I know, it is not so elegant, but does the job quickly if you don't have many files in your root folder.

[DefineByte]

I'd welcome it, if only to prevent someone from easily turning up the volume while I was listening to my Ipod (I'm sure they'd think it hilarious).