Hi Sup Forums, technical question about music (tried asking Sup Forums to no avail ), how do I make music louder without ruining the quality? Some songs sound great when I max my volume bar (windows 7), but if I try to raise their db in Audacity for example, the quality goes to shit, even if my volume bar is on half. It's still quieter than the unedited song in full bar, but shit quality. I don't get it.
Basically I want it to sound like maximum volume bar when my volume bar is at half. I can't seem to do that. What magic is the volume bar doing that I can't replicate?
MP3, WAV, FLAC, it's all the same story with regards to increasing volume. Raise 5 DB in software, get clipping, still quiet. Raise volume mixer bar, great quality and great loudness.
Yeah, it doesn't change much
Matthew Lewis
Get an external amp
Eli Martinez
Actually I tried this again, and it does make music louder, but that's not exactly what I'm looking for. I don't want ALL my music to be louder. I just want to edit specific songs to sound like max volume bar.
Joseph Taylor
Why? I'm happy with my setup, I just want certain songs to sound like max volume bar so I don't have to max my volume bar manually every time I listen to them.
Eli Rivera
when you adjust the volume bar in windows or in any os you're controlling the hardware amplification of the audio at an analogue level, everything on the pc is typically max volume and is reduced through software (digitally) before being spat out as an analogue signal, what you're trying to do in audacity by raising the db is adjusting the gain on the song (which is already playing at max volume) which isn't the same as adjusting the amplification at the hardware level
the actual name of the term eludes me at the minute but the volume the song plays at on the pc is baked into the file at time of recording and production, if it's not loud enough there's not much you can do other than trying to find a different release of the song that was mastered a little better
Colton Hernandez
Alright, I figured it was something like that. Thanks for the explanation. Guess I'll just keep manually adjusting the volume mixer depending on the song.
Tyler Murphy
foobar2000 replayGain maybe ?
Julian Green
You can set amplifying thingy in audacity to stop from clipping. But yeah, amplifying ruins quality, you cant stop that from happening.
Caleb Smith
The problem there is this:
Audio files have a maximum volume - 0dB FS. If you add gain after the fact to the file itself, which is what you are doing when you crank them up in audacity - then you could potentially make the signal contained in the file go above that maximum level. When this happens, the signal is modified in a non-desirable way. The points in the wave form that would be made to be above that level are instead made into a flat wave form as nothing can be above the maximum level. This flattened wave form is a distortion of the original wave form and the resulting sound will be distorted as well.
If you want the sound to be louder, your best course of action is to increase the amplification of your audio devices - the volume controls on the amplifier/speakers - and to make sure that all digital volume manipulators are set to their maximum level before adding gain.
The reason that you can't "make it sound like maximum volume bar when my volume bar is at half" is because the volume bar at max is the volume bar reducing the volume of the signal by nothing. When it is at half, it is reducing it by half. The volume bar does not increase volume - it only decreases it.
Leo Flores
With all of that said, I'm really not sure what the problem is. If you want it to be louder, why in the world are you turning your windows mixer level down? What do you think is achieved by that?
Chase Wood
>play game with a playlist in the background >quiet song comes up >turn max volume to hear it >game is now loud as fuck >have to fiddle with sound mixer >then, song with normal volume comes up >too loud, have to fiddle with sound mixer again >rinse and repeat
Ayden Phillips
Here's what I do. Speakers on 100% physically, system volume on 100%(too loud) and then shortcuts to manage the volume of the current application. There's a second shortcut for quick volume correction on the music player, if the current program I'm using is another(like playing a game or browsing the interwebs).
I still adjust it manually, but now it's just a quick keyboard shortcut instead of having to move the mouse to the little sound icon on taskbar, doubleclicking it, scrolling down to the music application, and fighting the unresponsive soundbar so that it let's me fucking finetune it so it sounds just right.
Jacob Hall
If you are using foobar2000 or something to that avail you can right click a song and rebuild it with a dB increase to the point where it doesn't clip. It's just under replay gain or some shit like that in the context menu.
Oliver Bailey
I use a program called Volume2 for the shortcuts to control the app volume, that detail was lost while editing.
Jace Gomez
>listening to two things breaking the concentration Games are for children anyway
Cameron Young
Ah, I understand.
What you are explaining is perceived loudness, rather than actual dB FS. Something that will help is "loudness normalization".
To understand why, I'll explain perceived loudness and compression. Dynamic range compression is a very common audio processing technique. What it does is take the highest amplitude portions of a wave form and make them less loud by some amount. After that, more gain can be added without "clipping" the signal (the phenomena I described before). This can greatly increase perceived loudness without increasing the max volume in a track.
Volume normalization will analyze an audio file and find what the average volume is. It will then reduce the volume of the track accordingly.
For example: >Track A Average volume of -0.2dB (0 dB is the max) which is very loud on average. Most likely this track will sound very loud. >Track B Has an average volume of -10dB and will sound less loud most of the time, though it may hit 0dB at times as well.
The normalizer will reduce the volume of the first track by roughly 10dB and it will sound similar to the second, although it may actually sound quieter as it will never have a signal that gets as loud as B.
You may also have some bad files though, but there's no way to fix that outside of finding new copies.
Juan Foster
You may also be experiencing the effect of the built in limiter. Your audio driver will have a limiter that ensures that your system volume will never by above 0. This is to protect sound quality and also to protect analog gear which can be damaged by clipping signals.
If you are playing two files at the same time from two programs, and each is at 0dB, that would produce a summed signal well above 0dB. Your sound driver will then apply dynamic range compression in the form of a limiter. This is like what I described above, but without adding any gain to the signal, and being much more severe than most compression. Any signal which goes above the threshold is reduced to the threshold. So if your game is at 100% volume and your audio player is as well, you may find that your song sounds quieter than before the game started up. You then reduce the volume on your game, and the song is louder sounding.
You could also be experiencing the effects of masking. Some frequencies (particularly lower frequencies) will make other frequencies less noticeable. Perhaps your game has some sounds which mask some important frequencies in your music.
Try listening to albums so that the relative material, volume, and perceived volume of the songs is roughly the same. That will at least reduce the frequency of volume adjustments you will have to make.
But really, how hard is it to adjust the volume now and then?
