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User profile for user: L4popi
L4popi Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

ITunes Editing and Transfer to Thumb Drive

I'm a musician with songs that I've digitized from old analog cassettes. I want to share them with my kids. My plan was to burn CDs straight from an ITunes playlist but the kids say I'm a dinosaur & they don't have any way to play CDs... they recommended downloading to a thumb drive/flash drive. I've loaded them onto ITunes and they sound fine BUT... 1) One of the songs is much lower (volume) than the others. I raised the volume on that tune (in Itunes) but I'm afraid I really didn't alter the file & after transferring to an external drive it will revert back to the low volume. Is there anything I can do in ITunes to fix this? And... 2) Any suggestions re: type of external drive (flash, thumb, etc.??) to use? I see so many for sale for USB 2.0 or 3.0 (I do not know what version usb they have) at all different GB space and price points.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!!

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Dec 22, 2021 11:06 AM

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,610 points

Posted on Dec 22, 2021 12:42 PM

I don't what you used to copy the files from cassette, but in Audacity there is a normalize function so you can use all of the available volume range. When you save that to a compressed format such as .mp3 or .m4a (AAC) the volume will be baked into the file. USB 3.0 is faster than USB 2.0 but unless you're moving really large quantities of data you probably don't need to worry too much. You need drives big enough for what you want to put on it, with perhaps some room for later if you're going to do this again.


tt2

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,610 points

Dec 22, 2021 12:42 PM in response to L4popi

I don't what you used to copy the files from cassette, but in Audacity there is a normalize function so you can use all of the available volume range. When you save that to a compressed format such as .mp3 or .m4a (AAC) the volume will be baked into the file. USB 3.0 is faster than USB 2.0 but unless you're moving really large quantities of data you probably don't need to worry too much. You need drives big enough for what you want to put on it, with perhaps some room for later if you're going to do this again.


tt2

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User profile for user: L4popi
L4popi Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Dec 23, 2021 5:07 AM in response to turingtest2

Got it. Thanks for the fast response! Actually I paid someone to transfer to CD, then I was left with a string of songs. I used Audacity to separate them into named tracks with 2 seconds between each & they are "normalized" (volume)... BUT I have a song that was already in ITunes that I added to the playlist & that's the one that is the problem. I guess I can send that one back to Audacity & bump the volume then back to the playlist? I was only hoping ITunes had a quick cure...

I was afraid I'd buy the wrong flash drive but I guess the usb is backward compatible so 2.0 (the inexpensive ones) should be fine.

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ITunes Editing and Transfer to Thumb Drive

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