Varied Volume - Software Preamp

[flebber]

After backing up and downloading many different forms of video and audio I find that all the audio volumes are differnt. some are very loud on low volume some are quite on high volume.

Without re-encoding all audio sections of video and audio files is there a way to increase volume above standard levels for "quiet" clips. Something like a "software preamp".

Spinal Tap had speakers that went to 11! And in some way I want to have the same !

Is there any Manual volume adjustment available(when xp is at full) ? Instead of extracting and dubbing and remuxing lots of audio.

[dat720]

What you want is a media player that has a normalisation filter, this will compress (reduce the dynamic range) the audio so the quite parts are louder and the loud parts are quieter, the audio level will seem to be the same all through the movie, which personally i hate.....

I use normalisation with mplayer, only for testing, when watching a movie normalisation is off!!! that is the way the movie was intended so that is the way i watch it!

[flebber]

Found what I am looking for, Mplayer has the ability to exceed 100% volume. I can't get it to work on windows XP yet, will have to keep trying.
Software Volume or softvol adjusts you volume using software amplification, not your sound cards hardware volume

* To use it add:
o -softvol −softvol-max <10.0−10000.0>
o To set the maximum amplification level in percent (default: 110). A value of 200 will allow you to adjust the volume up to a maximum of double the current level. With values below 100 the initial volume (which is 100%) will be above the maximum, which e.g. the OSD cannot display correctly.
* Example
o mplayer -softvol -softvol-max 200 media.avi

Found the information here http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_increase_MPlayer_volume_above_sound_cards_maximum_volume

** Solution

In SMPlayer -> Preferences -> General -> Audio - you just then need to enable checkbox "Use Software Volume Control" and select how much over 100% you wish to go.

[Blue_MiSfit]

You could alternatively use AC3Filter, and have it process PCM audio with its dynamic range compressor turned relatively high. This is what I usually do when using headphones on my laptop in noisy places.

~MiSfit