you can convert to mp3 and have monkey at the same time when converting prevent cliping when doing the converting.

at least i seen the option for preventing clipping there. wheather or not it works i don't know, because i use cdex to convert most the time so i can play music, but cdex uses the lame encoder and it has the option to prevent cliping when you convert, and normalize at the same time. and i normalize it at 99% volume, i get no headaches with ear phones or headphones. i also don't get any clipping, but i get loud volume on the song files and that is what i want. i see no connection to the playback db rate and the headaches of the reported possible cause of that. more likely it is cheap head/ ear phone speakers that cause the headaches, now that i have had happen to me, the cheap headphone speakers were tossed and i got bigger better ones.

the producers are more likely trying to get the song files to hit that tiny little peice of plastic they are using in the cheap head phone speakers and make it work like a bigger speaker. it just won't do it, with out the mass of paper to move the air you can't have good sound.
but the unnormal want to make everything smaller is the cause of most the trouble there are somethings that just need to be bigger for good use like speakers.

MCSmarties wrote:mainstream music nowadays is mastered at much too high a level? Producers seek a very "punchy" sound at the cost of killing more subtle nuances.

That's exactly what I've heard.

For my musical tastes, adjusting replay gain to level the tracks to about 91dB seems pretty effective at eliminating clipping while allowing me to "turn it up" on my various players.

That's actually a good question!

I use the mediamonkey default of 89dB. I'm not an audio engineer but I think that this limit was chosen to avoid clipping and/or dynamic compression.

In fact I have noticed that if I rip a CD myself and level it with mediamonkey, the sound is often less "shrill" than if I download music (which is often normalized at a much higher level) - regardless of file compression.

Isn't there a big controversy among audiophiles complaining that mainstream music nowadays is mastered at much too high a level? Producers seek a very "punchy" sound at the cost of killing more subtle nuances. I also heard that that's what causes headaches if you listen to "modern" music on headphones for too long (regardless of volume).

If the above is load of horsecrap, I would gladly stand corrected

I recently analyzed all my tracks so they would be leveled at playback and I like how my music seems more consistent now. The only problem is MM couldn't analyze my m4p tracks so they seem a lot louder, and sounds from webpages (mostly flash) also seem to be a lot louder. I was wondering what levels people used and whether there was a reason behind the default MM level of 89dB?