A request-- sensory-friendly O Fortuna

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I need to be able to listen to the song O Fortuna, but unfortunately, it's not very sensory-friendly. I have to keep songs at a volume low enough that if I can deal with the loud parts, I can't hear the soft parts. I don't want to keep trying to remember when the volume shifts and turning it up or down.

Does a version without the volume changes exist? If so, I would be most grateful if anyone were to help me find it. Please and thank you.

I sometimes have similar problems with a variety of classical music. Mahler is horrible to listen to. I recommend that you try to figure out which pitches bother you the most, the high or the low ones. (I think it would be the high ones - that is the way it is for many autistic people.) Then adjust your treble-bass drastically. I find that turning up the bass and positioning myself so that I can feel the vibration on some piece of furniture (e.g. a vinyl couch or a cupboard or glass pane) makes it more tolerable. The treble must be way down. I also wear ear plugs whilst listening to music sometimes to tone down the treble while I can still experience the vibration. Then I brace myself for the loud parts.

You could use a limiter plug in on your media player. You set a threshold on the device, and then anything above that amplitude gets squashed down. It can sound nasty in itself, but you'll get a more even volume dynamic.

Do they have things like this for a regular old fashioned hi-fi as well, or for a car radio?

You could convert the file on your computer to one with "normalized volume," flattening out the peaks, and then re-burn that onto a CD for listening in a regular car CD player or whatnot.

Yes, you could get a hardware device and run your hi-fi through it. Limiting music does damage the sound though, I don't think it makes for a terribly pleasant listening experience. But for a one off special occasion, it could be a useful tool.

Yep, I know. I don't have the same sensitivity all the time, sometimes I am quite fine. But there are times when I am audio-sensitive that I would like to listen to something to stop myself from ruminating, and neither my tinkly Baroque CDs, not 'easy-listening' music, nor the compositionally uninteresting Afrikaans pop songs and golden oldies on the radio do the trick. I seem to need some heavier rhythm with deeper sounds.

I love Fortune Plango Vulnera - by turns silly and deep. Not so keen on the first half, too many people misusing it as shorthand for EVIL. ^^