Reply #19: Bitrates shouldn't affect volume that much. [View All]

The bitrate is the quality of encoding, not the volume. It's how much of the information off the CD is stored, and how much is just forgotten in the name of smaller file sizes. Higher bitrates sound better--but you probably won't notice the difference unless you've got a nice pair of audiophile headphones or a good desktop speaker set.

If volume is giving you problems, you can adjust base volume for individual songs or for albums. Many CDs are recorded at different volumes, irritatingly enough. Seems the record industry realized that they can make up for cheap recording techniques by cranking the volume uniformly and hoping you don't notice. To correct this, just select the songs you want to fix, hit command-I (or ctrl-I on a PC) to Get Info, and then adjust the volume slider one way or the other. Or, you can set it to automatically level sound volume under the Preferences.