Lurikrunch

You may ask me 'why do that!? I can just turn up the volume on my speakers/headset!'. The main reason for me is that I have an mp3 player and rather sensitive headphones, plus it's easier if I don't need to fiddle with the volume for every other song to get it to a pleasing level. :)


MP3s

You are going to need these two programs:

1. Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)

2. LAME (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~raa110/audacity/lame.html)

The first thing you need to do is install Audacity. Install it wherever you please, it really doesn't matter. Extract lame.exe and lame_enc.dll from the LAME zip folder you downloaded, and put both of the files in the directory you installed Audacity to.

Now we need to set Audacity up to recognize LAME. Open up Audacity, go to Edit -> Preferences, then go to the third tab labelled File Formats. Under that pane, click the button at the bottom right of that screen labelled 'Find Library'. Point the search window to where you saved lame_enc.dll to. Now you can select the bit rate you want to export to. I suggest setting it to 320 kbps. Exporting a file where the base bit rate (bit rate of the file you imported) is lower than 320 kbps will not change the mp3's actual sound, but exporting a file where the base bit rate is 320 kbps with an export rate of something below that WILL convert it to a lesser quality.


Now we're actually going to edit an mp3! Load up the file using File -> Open, wait for it to finish importing. What you want to do is select the part of the song you want to change the volume on. You can select the whole thing, or just parts of it, that's up to you. Once you have the part selected, you can click the play button to hear a preview of it if you want. You have two options now: you can either go to Effect -> Normalize to auto-normalize the part you selected to -3dB, or go to Effect -> Amplify and manually select the dB. It's up to you which way you do it! Once you're done playing with the volume, deselect the part you selected (just to be safe), go to File -> Export As MP3. Specify the directory, save, then go listen to it!

You can also use this method to "trim" or edit an mp3 file. Use the little magnifying glass to zoom in to an acceptable level, then highlight the part you want to modify. You can use the options from Audacity to play with it, or press the delete key on your keyboard to trim it out totally.

FLACS

You need a new program for this, called FLAC Frontend. The newer versions of the flac encoder come bundled with FLAC Frontend, here's a link to the website:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html
Download and install to a location of your choosing.

Note: FLAC Frontend also has a plugin for Winamp that allows it to play, not surprisingly, FLAC files.

Install FLAC Frontend to wherever you want. Run FLAC frontend, click 'Add files' and point it to whichever flacs you want to edit. You want to then select the file in the window on the left, and click 'Decode'. This will make a .wav file in whichever directory you specified, the default is the same directory as the input file.

The next thing to do is run Audacity, import the .wav file and follow the same steps as editting an mp3. Export it as a .wav, then go back to FLAC frontend. Clear the .flac file with the 'Clear' button, click 'Add files' and point it to the newly editted .wav file(s). Make sure you untoggle replaygain (unless you're using software/hardware that can utilize replaygain. The only MP3 player I know of that can utilize replaygain is the Rio Karma). Now, just hit encode and boom, it will start encoding your flac.

Don't be surprised at the black box that shows up, it's normal. FLAC Frontend is just a GUI for a command line based encoder. It will place the newly made flac where you specifiy it, or by default, the same directory as the input file.