DescentBB

I'm getting into the MP3 player I bought. Got it hooked to the computer speakers and they work well as Krom suggested. First tried a FM station and the sound is
clear (even with station being 60 miles away) and plenty of strength both from station and player that I can only turn volume up partially or it is too loud. All fine and dandy. Next I downloaded nature sounds from 2 different sources. Both play well enough if I play them thru the computer but when I transfer them to the MP3 player and try to play them thru the same speakers I used for the radio station, the sound is weak even with the speakers turned all the way and the MP3 player's volume all the way up. Any way to increase the strength of the sound. This happens from 2 different download sources.

Note: Tried full size headphones and they work a bit better. Can't wear them while sleeping tho.

Make sure the MP3 player isn't using ReplayGain or some other audio normalizing function in its settings.

This is actually a complicated problem. Nature sounds generally have a high dynamic range and music/speech has a narrow dynamic range. A narrow dynamic range allows music and speech to have a higher average amplitude (volume) than material with a high dynamic range.

Also, I've rarely seen a media player or stereo match sources well. Either the radio is too loud or too quiet, or aux inputs are too loud or quiet. The difference you mention is common.

One solution is to compress the nature sounds then raise the volume with an audio editor. Sometimes "normalization" will do the trick, depending on the method. Peak normalization will raise the volume to the highest value without changing the dynamics, and RMS normalization will usually compress the signal until the desired average amplitude is reached. I don' t know of any easy to use, freely available resources to do this.

Here is an introductory video on audio compression if you are interested. Note: audio compression is one of the hardest things for audio engineers to master. It's fairly unintuitive and compression done well is transparent, unlike things like reverb where the effect is apparent.

also check any noise cancellation/reduction features as well.

I swapped out the old speakers I was using and replaced them with the newer ones (still 10 years old). Newer speaker are much better tho not quite the loudness when I player the nature sounds thru the computer. Going to try some blutooth speakers and see how they do.

Well screw the bluetooth speakers as I don't need them. Got some adapter cables so now O can just hook mp3 player to my Kenwood stereo amplifier/receiver. Tested it out and works nicely with my DJL studio speakers and volume of sound is not a problem. As a added benefit I can use my remote to turn on/off the receiver if I so desire or turn on a radio station if I so desire. So hopefully good to go. Thanks for all the input.