Need to increase volume on .wav, .mp3 files

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I have several audio clips that I would like to make louder. Can anyone recommend software (freeware or cheapware) that will let me do this?

I’ve downloaded audacity but I can’t figure out how to use it — tried selecting the track and using amplify, but nothing changed. Can’t find any help in the user documentation.

I’m an absolute novice at audio stuff (you’re not surprised, right?) so I’m looking for something reeeeeaallly simple to use.

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How loud you can play audio file will largely depend upon what kind of sound system you have.

There are primarily 2 types of audio management on most computers:
1 Add in cards or 3rd party aftermarket audio cards that are installed on empty PCIe slots.
2 Motherboard based sound solutions that are built into the mainboard.

Do you have a 3rd party audio card installed on your mainboard’s PCIe slots, or is the audio component built into the motherboard?
What do you have in terms of sound speekers/speeker systems?

Look over your computers documentation

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I doubt that it’s a sound card issue. All my audio files play ok, but each file plays at its own volume. Some of them are loud enough; others aren’t. That’s why I’m looking for software that will let me amplify the sound in a specific file.

Am I missing something here? Should I be looking for something else?

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To change the amplitude in Audacity, open the sound file, choose Edit | Select | All. Then Effect | Amplify. Then move the slider bar, or enter in an “Amplification (dB)” value. Alternately, you could select a New Peak Amplitude (dB) value. You might have to check the Allow Clipping box if the peak amplitude goes over 0.0 dB.

By default, the Amplify dialog is set to make the New Peak Amplitude value 0.0 dB. This is the maximum value that you can set without clipping. Clipping results when the maximum amplitude of any part of the sound clip goes outside the valid sound range (that is, is louder than 0.0 dB).

Since you indicated that Amplify did nothing, I suspect that the sound clip is already at the maximum possible setting without causing clipping (and thus possibly distortion).

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Thank you, cafed00d! I appreciate the explanation, and your advice worked beautifully!

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My apologies, you said you were an absolute novice, I must have undershot :rolleyes:
Check out Replay Gain

What type of audio player do you use?
A decent player makes a difference, as does quality rips.

Replay Gain
Automatic Volume Leveling in Winamp with Replay Gain

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For mp3 files I would personally recommend mp3gain
It does both single track normalization & album normalization (where it analyses the contents of a whole folder & adjust all file by the same amount)

From the link above…

Tired of reaching for your volume knob every time your mp3 player changes to a new song?
MP3Gain analyses and adjusts mp3 files so that they have the same volume.
MP3Gain does not just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear.
Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless. There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.

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Wow! I just looked at MP3Gain — that looks terrific. One of these days, I need to turn up the sound on a whole bunch of files — I’ll have to try it. Thank you!

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+1 on the recommendation for mp3gain – I use to ensure that all of my mp3 are set to the same level – helps prevent fiddling with the volume control every time a song changes.

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You may refer to the following step by step guide on How to Increase Audio Volume in MP3, MP4, WAV, WMA, WMV, MKV, VOB, MPG?

This guide can easily help:

Increase audio volume of all popular audio formats like increase MP3 volume, increase WAV volume, increase WMA volume, or increase sound volume in AC3, FLAC, M4A, VOC, QCP, AMR, AWB, OGG, CAF, AIFF, RA, AU, APE, and etc
Boost the sound volume from video files like increase MP4 volume, increase AVI volume, boost the sound volume from other video formats including WMV, MOV, MPG, FLV, 3GP, VOB, MKV, ASF, RMVB, AVCHD, MXF, DV, and etc
Extract audio from video and then convert to audio format as well as increase the audio volume
Increase audio volume as well as convert to other audio formats
Increase video volume as well as convert to other video formats
Remove audio from video files like MP4, AVI, WMV, MKV, VOB, FLV, MPG, 3GP, MOV and etc

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In order to increase volume of wav and mp3 files, i recommend you a full guide in a blogger.

It will info you how to:
Extract audio from video and increase audio volume in one step
Convert video to desired video format and increase volume video in one step
Convert audio to desired audio format and increase audio volume in one step

Hope it can help you!!

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Idealshare and Bigasoft are both pay for programs!!!
Audacity gives a choice of amplify or normalize.
Normalize is just a little farther down the menu; choose Edit | Select | All. Then Effect | Normalize.

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