So I found a lecture that had been recorded and posted online that I wanted to listen to.

The only problem, is, it was very, very, quiet. I had to turn up the volume all the way to hear it all all, and still could barely hear it; not to mention that I almost damaged my ears when I changed to listen to something else.

So, being me, I went looking for an open-source tool that could modify the volume of an audio recording. I found some references to mp3gain, but this was an M4A file which is (basically) an AAC file. It also turns out there is something called aacgain. But what I was finding was source code, which I don’t usually bother with.

Nevertheless, I downloaded and tried to compile it. I was able to compile mp3gain easily, so I was encouraged. aacgain, which I really needed, was more complicated. But, I dug in, and after downloading various things from SourceForge and Google Code, and combining that with an existing copy of the core mp3gain code to Github, I was able to get aacgain up and running.

I say this is an exercise in software archaeology because this useful software was written several years ago and hosted on sites that are no longer the go-to places for open source code. There was a bit of fiddling required to get them running on a modern system. In the end, though, this is one of the promises of Open Source; you’re free to find something useful that no one is actively maintaining and get it working again yourself. It’s not just about the cool new stuff–something old and unmaintained, if Open Source, can still be valuable.

I’ve placed all the source code I cobbled together back in a Github repository for the benefit of anyone else who can use it.

Now off to listen to that lecture!