Best software for boosting audio levels in a file?

Is there any software out there that lets me boost the audio directly within the file itself (like a song or a movie)? I’m looking for something like a converter, if you will, but ideally without changing the file format.
Sometimes when I download a movie, I have to crank my TV volume up to 70 or 80% just to hear anything clearly, even though I usually watch regular shows at about 10 or 15. I can't figure out why the audio on torrents is often so quiet, especially with newer releases. Could that be an issue with the pirate rips, or is it something else? 😁

If you have a DivX (.avi) file, I suppose you could extract the audio and load it into mp3DirectCut. Once that's done, if you navigate to the Edit menu and select Normalize..., you can save the processed audio and then just mux it back into the original video file.

Can I do this with an MP4? It’s already in that format, and that's what I need to boost.

edit: How do I strip the audio? 😁 If you could just give me a quick rundown of the exact steps...

Regarding extracting audio from an .avi file, I suppose I relied on an older version of Adobe Premiere.
As for dealing with mp4 files, you might want to try using Handbrake. If you select Audio, then pick the specific audio format used in your film—which is typically AAC—you can go into the Volume control section to slightly boost the levels before encoding it. After that, I guess you could just swap it out for the original audio track using MKVToolNix
.

I’m pretty sure you can get the same result using Winamp during conversion.

Hahaha, you want to convert every single movie you download?!?!?
You'd be better off just heading into your codec settings and cranking up the volume there...

Tapapapatallk

I haven't tried anything yet. I wasn't really feeling it over the weekend, so maybe I'll give it a shot tomorrow...

Raymond Bennett said:Hahaha, you're going to convert every single movie you download?!?!?
You'd be better off just heading into the codec settings and bumping up the volume there...

Tapapapatallk

How do you actually do that?

It really depends on which codec you're running. I personally use the K-Lite codec pack, which comes with a dedicated settings app where you can tweak everything. Since I use VLC Media Player for my audio, I just jump into those specific settings to mess with the volume levels and the equalizer. I usually have my master volume cranked up to 150% with normalization turned on. It makes a huge difference on my Samsung TV; it sounds just as loud as when I'm watching cable. I used to have this same headache where I had to blast the TV volume to 50 or higher just to hear anything, but now I can keep it at a chill 10 or 20.

Hopefully, that clears things up for you...

Tapapapatallk

VLC can boost volume by default during playback

Audio in modern films tends to be quieter on average due to high dynamic range—think explosions being way louder than the dialogue.
Read up on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

You could use Windows Movie Maker to crank up the audio in a file if you really need to.

It seems to me that the lower volume levels are most noticeable when one attempts to watch a movie featuring 6-channel surround sound on a standard stereo setup, where essentially only the two front channels are being utilized.

Yeah. But just like they mentioned above. When there's dialogue, the audio feels thin, yet when an explosion or something similar kicks in, it's suddenly way too loud.

Personally, all that talk about being "200% ready" from Microsoft didn't mean squat to me. It felt more like they just tossed the phrase in there without a second thought.

Tapapapatallk