Automatic Volume Control

Automatic Volume Control is an excellent addition to Peak or Loudness Normalization of audio with too loud and too soft parts, peaks and clicks, including podcasts, interviews, and voice recordings. It is the feature which applies compression intelligently.

Some Automatic Gain Control (AGC) hardware devices can do a similar job, but since they have to perform in real time, they cannot do much, not mention that such devices are usually expensive. Automatic Volume Control can do better by performing multiple passes over the audio, generating a loudness map of where the volume changes.

Automatic Volume Control has an enormous power as it is simple to operate and can be done automatically without intervention. Just enable it in the Preferences / Effects, drop your interview or podcast almost of any format to the main window, and a few seconds later you get a new version which sounds just better.

Let's consider a few examples and issues, where the use of Automatic Volume Control is helpful or even necessary.

• Improving Movie Audio high Dynamic Range
• Improving Voice Record with clicks
• Improving Podcasts and Audio Books
• Improving Speech Records and Interviews with quiet segments
• Improving Music for listening in noisy environment

 

Improving Movie Audio with high Dynamic Range

As an example below is the audio from a movie, passed through Peak Normalization filter and normalized to the highest possible level of 0 dBFS. The voices in the first part stay barely hearable, and the second part is way too loud, as the maximum Peak belongs to the section with the noisy shots.

 

Automatic Volume Control, enabled in Preferences / Effects window, can be a perfect solution here. Voices in the beginning become hearable and distinctive, and the gain of the part with shots is lowered.

 

Improving Voice Record with clicks

Another example is the speech record with accidental clicks at the beginning and the end. The maximum Peak Level belongs to clicks, so Peak Normalization has no effect here and the volume of the important voice part cannot be adjusted to maximum. Automatic Volume Control is a solution here again.

 

Below the same audio improved with Automatic Volume Control.

 

Improving Podcasts and Audio Books

Automatic Volume Control is a perfect tool for to improve quality of audio books and podcasts. Peak Normalization alone may provide some useful results.

Automatic Volume Control enhances the audio book and makes it even better and perfect for listening.

 

Improving Speech Records and Interviews with quiet segments

Let's consider an interview or discussion where some people were close to microphones and others were not. Such voice recording ends up at with the substantial difference in volumes between the two people speaking.

Is there a way to increase the quiet parts without affecting the loud parts much? This task is solved by the post-production engineers every day. It takes them hours of hard work with expensive and complex tools to solve them.

Now with Automatic Volume Control the task is automatic and takes just seconds!

 

Improving Music for listening in noisy environment

Lets consider another example, how Automatic Volume Control behaves with a studio music audio. Peak Normalization gives some results again.

Below is the same audio, normalized with Automatic Volume Control enabled. It can provide a good job with compression even in this case, making the audio perfectly listenable. That might be useful in the car or other noisy environment.

However, Automatic Volume Control can provide undesired result in a case of an audio with already compressed Dynamic Range, so checking result of conversion might be required.