iVolume3.7.5

If it's really true that iVolume 2 will no longer work properly with iTunes 7.7.1 and newer, then that really stinks. Because quite frankly, $30 for this one-trick pony is a bloody insane ripoff, and I simply won't pay it. It was well worth the $7 it originally cost, and I was even willing to pay again when it doubled in v2, but the developer is getting awfully greedy now, and $30 is absolutely RIDICULOUS -- especially when you consider that the core "work" done by this app is done by an open source algorithm painstakingly written by SOMEBODY ELSE, given away for free, then taken by this schmuck and wrapped in a simple GUI that gets unnecessarily gunked up with CPU-wasting and pointless animations while the price -- for the exact same algorithm and results (which is all the work of someone ELSE) -- doubles every release. I no longer recommend this to anyone, and I will never support this guy ever again.

IVolume 3.7 crashes immediately on startup. I use a iMac27 and latest version of Mavericks. Anyone having the same issue? No problems however when returning to iVolume 3.6.6.

As of iTunes 11 (or maybe one of the later versions of iTunes 10.x), I've run into a lot of songs in my library that are no longer playing at the correct volume level. It used to be possible to "nudge" iTunes into re-reading the iTunNORM value from the file, but the old trick for this (editing some tag, then changing it back) no longer works. 1. Selecting multiple songs and changing one or more tag values no longer causes iTunes to refresh the SoundCheck value for those songs. Absolutely nothing will change when editing multiple songs. The *only* way to get iTunes to recognize the volume level in the file is to change a tag for one (and *only* one) song at a time, e.g. add "2" to the end of the album name. 2. Here's the worst part: as soon as you change that tag back, iTunes reverts to the wrong volume level, which means there's effectively no way to get it to recognize the SoundCheck level set by iVolume unless you're willing to have wrong info for the song. Even restarting iTunes between changes doesn't help. iTunes now seems to have the original SoundCheck level for each song (as measured by iTunes when the song was first imported) stored in its big unreadable binary database, and apparently there is no longer any way to get it to update that value. If a song plays too loud or too quiet, it's basically stuck that way. While iVolume itself still works quite well, this issue really defeats the entire purpose of using it. I've contacted the developer with a detailed report of this problem. Here's hoping he can figure out some way to work around this, because I've tried everything (and I've been coercing iTunes to do what I want it to do since v1.0, so I know my way around it).

OMG! This is the worst case of NAGware I've ever seen! The registration window says it will remind you "from time to time to register." That "time to time" works out to every 5 seconds! When unregistered, the process only runs for 5 seconds before it stops and displays a registration nag screen. You must wait the designated amount of time before you may proceed: 1st pause=5 sec., 2nd pause=10 sec., 3rd pause=15 sec., and every pause after that is 20 seconds. So after running for 5 seconds, you must wait 20 seconds before you can run for 5 more seconds! Then, even though the process starts again, it provides an extremely annoying uh-uh sound when you press the Continue button. Maybe the registration screen pops up after a certain number of tracks have been processed, but it worked out to every 5 seconds for me. And don't you dare go try to use another app while it's running, because in 5 seconds when it's time to hit Continue again, the icon begins bouncing in the Dock, making you want to punch the screen. I have now disabled Dock icon bouncing. I didn't get to fully evaluate the app, because I don't have the patience or time to sit here pressing the Continue button every 20 seconds, and I'm not not gonna waste time making a script to do it for me. I'm giving 2 stars for Features, Value and Stability just because I have to provide a rating to submit this review. They may merit 5 stars, but there's no way to tell since I couldn't test the app.

I wanted all my 6½ thousand music tracks on iTunes to be at the same volume level, and had started listening to them individually and adjusting each one. This would take for ever, so I looked for an application that would do it for me, and iVolume seemed ideal. I set it to adjust all tracks to 93db. Although it adjusted all the tracks, they were audibly still at different volume levels. Many of the originally quieter ones, such as those from the 1930s, although now louder, were still too quiet and certainly not at the same volume level as louder tracks. To overcome this, I created folders in iVolume, each with its own volume adjustments, and started listening to each track to determine which ones should go into which folders to bring all tracks to about the same volume level. It was several weeks before I realised I was doing again what I had been doing in the first place before buying iVolume to do it for me. I want an application that will adjust all my music collection so that all tracks play at the same volume level such that, for example, Bing Crosby plays at the same volume level as Metallica without my having to adjust the volume. iVolume is not that application. Finally, there doesn't appear to be a way to remove all iVolume's adjustments and reset mps3 to their original volume levels.

Will iVolume ever be updated? It still crashes on me in SL when analyzing the tracks....

This app seems to work, but I'm finding recently (since 10.6) that random songs that were previously adjusted now are gray, and need a re-adjustment. Also, songs that have been played many times mysteriously come up as "File Not Found" in this app. I've gone so far as to remove the songs from the Library and re-add them, but no change. I've tried to get an answer from the developer, but no reply yet. I have about 9600 songs - does this make a difference in the way iVolume works? And there's still no alternative to this?

Apparently iTunes 9's Sound Check uses a new mechanism for adjusting song playback volume. Any new songs I import into iTunes 9 cannot be adjusted by iVolume. It gives me the "No iTunNORM Tag" error every time. And yes I have Sound Check turned on. I hope the developers are already on this problem.

I really like the results this produces - and it was great value with the MacUpdate promo. As I'd already bought it when it went on sale by itself, I have two licenses now... and still don't feel cheated. Having said that, the user interface needs a fair bit of work to make it meet the quality of the underlying programming. Just putting a glossy "piano black" top on a floating window and a side pane of "Groups" does not an consistent Apple interface make. Aside from some very questionable aesthetics ("glossy" black title bar? "Glowing" blue text? What on earth are the earbuds floating in space for?), there are some fundamental navigation problems that need addressing. Starting with preference for "Use standard MacOS window" would be great. For a start, why is any search reset when any function is called? If I search for U2 so that I can level new tracks I know I added... and I select them... and I click "Start", WHY would the search be cleared - returning me to a full list of all 17,000 tracks in my iTunes library? That's nuts. I usually want to watch the tracks being adjusted without doing a second search or scrolling through 12,000 tracks. Just don't clear the search box automatically - that's what the "X" at the end of the box is for. It even happens when I call "adjust tracks selected in iTunes". Not cleverly executed. "Groups" is no substitute for a quick search & adjust. You shouldn't need to create a new "group" every time you want to isolate a set of tracks to level and check to see how much they were adjusted. In fact I still can't work out what groups are really useful for. I understand the general idea, but they really ought to function more like smart playlists and be dynamic search groups. Having to drag/drop or copy tracks to a new group each time I create it makes them much less useful. I would really like a "Live" group in iVolume to contain all tracks that have "live" in the title, genre or gouping tags to be in that group all the time. Updating the library/links. There has to be a better way to reload the contents of the iTunes library than quitting and re-launching iVolume. The MacOS has supported system events that notify applications of changes in files since... oh... like System 6.0.2 or something earlier. Not knowing the database has been changed and updating the information in resident memory is a bit sloppy. Even if that's tricky to add - just a button that re-loads the library manually would be great. Don't make me quit/restart every time a track is added to iTunes. Similarly - there has to be a better way to handle "No iTunesNORM tag". Maybe it will require a script to tell iTunes to add one, but that should probably be on the list of future things to tidy up. Still and all - I like the results - it works - and it's a good effort. It just needs a bit of spit and polish (and less polish on the title bar). [BTW - you can easily remove the absurd earbuds yourself (but not the piano black & glowing text) if you just "Show Package Contents" and look for "PhoneLeft.png" and "PhoneRight.png". Delete. You're done. Won't cause any harm in my experience. If you didn't understand that, probably best to leave it alone.]

I'm not going to give this app a rating as I take full responsibility for not reading the user's guide, etc as I should have. As far as working, it seems to do a fine job. My problem lies in the comment replacement this app makes. Thousands of comments about songs dating back several years--all gone (the word 'furious' comes to mind in this situation). Does this app really have to replace comments with their own drivel? If you don't comment your songs, then go for it. If you do, I cannot recommend it. (There is a preference check that allows one to turn off comment overwrites, but if you click it a warning message pops up stating the app won't work properly if it can't write over comments.)

Well, I finally had a chance to test this out on a Mac Mini (1.83 GHz Core2Duo), and I will say one thing: iVolume 3 really is a lot faster if you have a multicore Intel Mac. As I said before, I saw no speed improvement over version 2 on my PowerBook G4, which is what makes the upgrade price so hard to swallow (essentially no benefit for older systems). I also noticed that you can configure iVolume 3 to work like version 2 (i.e. "Start button processes tracks selected in iTunes"), which was the other main complaint I had about the workflow in v3. When I'm able to afford a new Mac, I will probably suck it up and pay the $20 to upgrade, as it does seem to offer real improvements on newer hardware. I'm still disappointed about the price doubling in every release, and the fact that iVolume 2 is no longer available for download for those who want to stick with the current version for now, but at least the speed increase adds some real value for the money.

First of all, yes, this is a "one trick pony". However, this is a pony that Apple, and iTunes should do a much, much better job with than they do. So... as someone who makes a lot of mixes, burns CDs for people, and listens to a lot of music, $30 isn't so bad. I LOVED version 1.0, but I dinged the DEV in a review here when 2.0 came out, because of the "turn on soundcheck" function. Apparently when the 4th gen iPods came out, they closed the "loophole" the dev was using, so he had to go that route. So now this version has come out, and at first I was VERY skeptical about plunking for more $$. However, I downloaded the demo, and.. lo-and-behold... it IS re-built from the ground up. The interface is much improved, and it now has the ability to process many songs at once. Yay. It also produces much better results than 2.0. And while still not perfect, it's still better than iTunes "stock" soundcheck. A couple of features that need a'implimentin': • A PAUSE button • Some way of dealing with "no tag" songs. ...updating the tags in iTunes only fixes a scant few of these. More songs than you'd think do NOT have the proper tags. • Some way of dealing with iTunes AAC protected songs, and podcasts. Otherwise, a worthy update. A step forward. Stable, fast, and pretty too.

If it's really true that iVolume 2 will no longer work properly with iTunes 7.7.1 and newer, then that really stinks. Because quite frankly, $30 for this one-trick pony is a bloody insane ripoff, and I simply won't pay it. It was well worth the $7 it originally cost, and I was even willing to pay again when it doubled in v2, but the developer is getting awfully greedy now, and $30 is absolutely RIDICULOUS -- especially when you consider that the core "work" done by this app is done by an open source algorithm painstakingly written by SOMEBODY ELSE, given away for free, then taken by this schmuck and wrapped in a simple GUI that gets unnecessarily gunked up with CPU-wasting and pointless animations while the price -- for the exact same algorithm and results (which is all the work of someone ELSE) -- doubles every release. I no longer recommend this to anyone, and I will never support this guy ever again.

I thought the upgrade price was steep, too, but then I used it. I used to use the old one and it was just okay--it did an important job, but not particularly elegantly. And eventually the issue with the iTunNORM tags made it virtually unusable. The new one is ridiculously fast compared to the older versions if you have a CPU that can take advantage of it. I'm on a Mac Pro and it is on pace to power through a 21,000-song collection in about 8 hours, even while using the computer for other tasks. In the old version, you're looking at 3-4 days for the same size library. It also has not crashed once--the old one used to crash every few hours (semi-understandable considering the amount of data being processed for such a long period of time, but still annoying). As for the iTunNORM tag errors, I finally broke down and tried the process outlined on their Web site, and while it does take time, I didn't find it particularly "painful"--you're just creating a temporary library, deleting it and going back to your old one like nothing happened. And after doing that, I haven't seen a single one of those errors, so it must have worked. The one remaining caveat is that protected iTunes tracks can't be analyzed. But they can still use the default iTunes SoundCheck adjustments, which are imperfect but better than nothing. I'm glad this has been upgraded. It's absolutely essential if you listen to your tracks at work or on an iPod and don't want to be changing the volume every time a new song comes on.

Guys, you have to realize that the maker of iVolume lives in Europe. In Euro the price hasn't changed that much. :) That being said: I think version 3 clearly needs some work before it's worth its price.

First of all you may need to change your paradigm of business. It is the exception for a person to be in business to provide a product or service. The overwhelming focus of almost all business (non-profits excluded) is to make money. Providing a service or product is just how they do it. Some achieve a balance between the quality of the product or service; some are just greedy. For those whose product or service exceed the cost of what they are providing, they either go out of business or run it as a non-profit. In my experience I have encountered these types of business persons: 1. Quick Buck Artist: Driven by greed, supply a barely on non functional product or service - interested in single purchases by suckers. 2. The Opportunist: Puts out a product or service that sort of works but provide little or no support. In the case of software, buy it again at or nearly at full price. Only looking for one time purchases by uninformed customers and not interested in long term business relationships. 3. Show Me the Money: Puts out quality service or product but charges for every little item or update. 'Nickels & 'Dimes' people to death. Business plan is 'Whatever the market will bear.' Looking for customers that are willing to 'mortgage their house' in order to use their product or service. Only interested in long term business relationships with customers who have deep pockets. 4. Desired Business Person: Achieves a balance between solid products or services and a fair profit. Their reputation and ethics is as important as profit. Looking for long term business relations where the customer is satisfied and the company makes a reasonable profit. 5. Clueless: No business sense at all. Puts out a good product or service but does not know how to market or charge for it. A short term relationship for both - business and customer. Such businesses go out of business. 6. Philanthropist or Student: Puts out a great product or service. In business for the experience. Regards the journey as the reward or in it for the learning experience. Does not expect to make money but hopes to break even someday. It not, at least they leave a legacy and happy customers. So I will leave it to the reader to choose what category you might place this developer. Too bad I vote tally can't be set up on MacUpdate :) FYI: Non-Profit can be sort of a misnomer. While the net profits of a non-profit is supposed to be zero, employees are paid, sometimes very handsomely. Some administrators do very well to the tune of 6 or even 7 figure salaries. That's is not 'non-profit' by my standards. Some argue that that is what they are worth as they would be making that or more in 'industry.' But that has nothing to do with it. If they accept a position with a non-profit there is supposed to be a more important reason that the paycheck. If they were looking for a fat paycheck they should have stayed in 'industry' instead of profiteering from others good will.

Here is the real deal with this software (from the developer). This application will NOT adjust the volume of songs ALREADY on your iPod. It will only adjust songs in your local iTunes library. Those changes stay in effeect when you transfer the songs to your iPod. This is not a bug. The information this software uses to make its adjustments is not stored on your iPod, only in your iTunes library. So, adjusting the volume of songs already on your iPod in simply not possible using the method this particular application uses.

I doubt the problem with iVolume, but is anyone else getting a lot more "No Tag" errors since installing iTunes 7?

It still can't process iTMS files. So, what is it good for, if you have music you encoded yourself, and music you bought? Try to listen to such a playlist: your ears will fall off... It's a good idea, but without m4p support: forget it.

I have set all my songs for the default level of -90db with Clipping allowed. Sounds great in the headphones or thru the dock connection, but my iTrip is now unusable. The songs aren't loud enough to give a decent signal strength, even with the iPod's volume turned up to maximum.

Works very nicely - EXCEPT it reports an "error" on every protected AAC song (i.e. iTunes Music Store song) in my library. This is not a clipping-related error. The Error message comes in the "Desired" column. So now my iTunes library is normalized sound-wise, except for the iTMS songs, which unfortunately in my experience are 6-9db louder than all my other song files. Anyone know what this iTMS song problem is about? I have a version of the problem with SoundCheck too - Soundcheck will normalize the songs' volume in the library, but not when burning a CD (and yes, that's with "use Soundcheck" selected in iTunes' Burning prefs).

The "Sound Check" in iTunes doesn't work as well as this. It seems to dynamically adjust the volume in the middle of a track, which is not what you want. The analysis that this program does is REALLY slow, but the results are great. I rarely have to adjust the volume on my iPod.