A question for audio engineers

My mp3 player is hooked up to a JVC receiver, which funnels the signal to a pair of very respectable Infinity speakers.
 
 Whenever I set the mp3 library to play every title at RANDOM...I find I must re-adjust the volume for every song.  It seems to depend on the quality of the CD source.  Older discs generally produce a lowered volume, although if they are remasters they are booming.  Newer discs are always at peak volume...while some techno discs (for example, Chemical Bros.) and some mp3-to-mp3 transfers really come thru at peak volume.  Does anyone else, but moi, experience this constant volume-adjusting effect on RANDOM?
 
 My question:  Is there an affordable device that I could add to my set up which could make all audio, regardless the source, to play at an even volume...even on RANDOM-play...so that I could achieve that "radio station @ home" effect, if you know what I mean???

[kosmo vinyl]

welcome to land of over compression... don't know about anything that automaticaly levels audio and if it does exist it's gonna be expensive studio type equipment

[chaz]

I'd say it would be easier and cheaper to find a piece of software to adjust the volume levels of you MP3 library to uniform level.

I get this same effect in the car when playing my 6 CD changer on random, so I don't think the answer really is "more software" related.  Broadcast radio does have some sort of expensive electronic signal filtering equiptment so that this volume-limiting effect doesn't disturb their outgoing uniform signal.  I was just hoping, by chance, that there's now something available for the consumer market???

[kosmo vinyl]

even with software it's tough i've used Jam on a Mac to create mix cds and it's hard to set levels between tracks...
 
 is there away to set the volume of a MP3 when you create it? iTunes claims to this but is it really just storing the setting within it's database?

[Chip Chanko]

The Soundcheck option in iTunes is supposed to check the level of songs when you add them to iTunes and then adjust accordingly when playing the song back (and is supposed to do the same on your ipod), but it doesn't work very well. I think the best bet is to do some sort of controlled normalization when you rip a CD. There probably is some sort of program that would normalize your entire mp3 collection since this is something that lots of people are frustrated with. Lately I've found that I don't have to adjust my ipod's level that much (although I mostly listen to albums, not mixes or playlists, which is where the problem would be more of a nuisance).

[kosmo vinyl]

even on a radio station there will somebody manually adjusting the volume of tracks... whether it's done before or live... djing with old and new cds is always fun for adjusting the volume.

[Chip Chanko]

Do radio stations use something like  this ?

Originally posted by Chip Chanko:
  Do radio stations use something like  this ?

There you go.  Only it doesn't look very idiot-proof...

[Sir HC]

In the old days you would make a CD so that the peaks were well below the max, say -6 dB. Then came the louder wars.  Everyone wants their CD to be "louder" than the other ones.  More compression, and now it is to the point where there is distortion in there.  You can actually see clipping from trying to slam the CD levels higher and higher.  In the past when doing mix CDs I would relevel the tracks using Sound Forge, but this is time consuming to do to a lot of tracks.  I would think it is pretty simple to make some plug-in that would auto level the CDs, but I don't know of any out there.

[ggw]

I never suspected Dupek to be a Chemical Brothers fan.

[Justin Tonation]

The Volume Logic plugin works pretty well at evenning out playback levels from software players (iTunes, Musicmatch, Winamp, etc.), and it's cheaper than a new piece of hardware. But you gotta hook yr computer up to yr stereo, which should be pretty easy.

Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
  I never suspected Dupek to be a Chemical Brothers fan.

...Just that Block Rawkin' Beats album from 1997.  It's required 90s listening, isn't it?

Originally posted by beetsnotbeats:
  The Volume Logic plugin works pretty well at evenning out playback levels from software players (iTunes, Musicmatch, Winamp, etc.), and it's cheaper than a new piece of hardware. But you gotta hook yr computer up to yr stereo, which should be pretty easy.

That looks like reasonable software, but what I would also like is a user-friendly component that will fix CD multidisc randoming, as well.

[Justin Tonation]

Originally posted by Ellis D. Fleischbach:
  That looks like reasonable software, but what I would also like is a user-friendly component that will fix CD multidisc randoming, as well.

Now that takes hardware. Got platinum card?