The end of the volume rollercoaster
A playlist assembled from different sources is a mess of loudness: a 1980s rip, a modern master and a voice memo can differ by a factor of ten. This tool measures each file by perceived loudness (EBU R128 — the broadcast standard) and adjusts it to your chosen target, taming peaks along the way. Quiet files come up, loud files come down, and the whole batch finally sits at one level.
−14 LUFS is what major streaming platforms normalize to — the right default for music. Podcasts usually sit near −16, and if you want maximum punch for a party mix, −11 is the "hot" setting.
Honest note: the audio is re-encoded in the process (the classic MP3Gain trick of editing loudness fields without re-encoding is a different, format-specific technique). At the bitrates used here the difference is inaudible for everyday listening.