So here I am using iTunes on my Apple. So far so good. The downside is that I have an iBead as an mp3 player, so there are a few problems with that. First of all, iTunes only plays nice with the iPods (and a few other oddballs ;-). For me to put mp3’s on my iBead, I can drag them over from iTunes onto the USB drive, but when things’ don’t fit, it just doesn’t copy at all. Also, automatic random playlists aren’t that automatic.
So far, I can live with all these little problems. I can create a playlist limited to a particular size, empty my iBead and drag the mp3’s over. But when I play them on my iBead, the volume levels are far apart. In the old days I used mp3Gain on my PC to level out all volumes, which worked great. But iTunes has it’s own take on that: It stores a relative volume in the file, and iPods know how to handle this properly, adjusting the volume. My iBead however, doesn’t.
Tonight I went out to look for a tool which could adjust the volumes of my mp3’s on my Mac mini. And guess what? I found it! MacMP3Gain does it all, and it is currently processing my complete library, adjusting all volumes. It has a “nice” option so it won’t hog all processing power. I think it will be finished somewhere tommorow afternoon. It claims to be lossless, so I guess I can run it on my complete library every once in a while without having to worry about which files are new or not.