I need to manage volume spikes in my sound system?

An Equalizer will only cut and boost certain Frequencies, you need to Normalize your tracks.

What you need is a compressor.

This is a cheap one: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/3630/
This is a nicer one: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/266XL/

What this does is take your audio signal, and compresses it into a smaller volume range. So the quietest parts will get louder, and the loudest parts will get quieter. Louder songs will still be louder, quieter songs will still be quieter, but the difference between them will be less.

You can also, in software, normalize or compress your tracks, but if you just want a piece of hardware to do it, this is the way.

Look for a program called MP3 Gain, it will normalize all your tracks to a certain volume, it’s simple…

@grumpyfish A Limiter would be more ideal, compression is more for the dynamics of a sound…

@grrgold Save your self a ton of money and use the software i mentioned, the above post is more for Professional Audio…

I’m no audiophile, but iTunes offers you the option to normalize all audio in your library at once.

@OutOfTheBlue But a limiter just reduces the maximum dB, it doesn’t scale the dynamic range, like a compressor does, unless I’m confusing a Limiter with a gate or something.

@markyy: Sound check is the first step… but it really doesn’t work very well, in my experience.

@grumpyfish You are correct about the Limiter, there are several kinds, Brick Wall Limiter would be ideal if you was to use Hardware, but i figured a Limiter would be more useful as they are not really messing with the Threshold, Attack, Release or Sustain of a sound but rather trying to keep the dB’s at a certain limit, with a limiter it would do just that, the lower volume tracks would be played at the regular range, but when a track comes on and tries to exceed the set dB’s it would be constricted and never peak above the set Limit….

I could talk Audio all day lol, i produce Electronica and other Genres, i use Cubase 4 a long with a lot of plug-ins, i will do some of my mix downs in Logic some times but mainly do most of my work Cubase and Sound-forge, i have a few pieces of hardware to but i been getting away form that moving to mostly software now.