The VideoLAN Forums

How do you disable all audio normalization altogether?

Whenever action scenes start the volume drops way too much.

This is not turned on by default. Try resetting your preferences.

I have countless other settings I do not want reset so I'd rather not reset my preferences unless there is absolutely no other option.

Are you suggesting this is the only way to turn off volume normalization?

Regardless of what the defaults are, how do you disable audio normalization?

Use the audio effects panel. This is nothing fancy, and I mean, you must have turned it on once, because it is not enabled by default.

The volume normalization box under the filter tab in the audio effects panel is unchecked.

What else could be causing the dips in volume during loud scenes?


Under preferences > show all > audio > filters > volume normalizer

The current settings are:

Number of audio buffers 20
Maximal volume level 2

Under preferences > show all > audio > filters > compressor

RMS/peak 0
Attack time 25
Release time 100
Threshold level -11
Ratio 8
Knee Radius 2.5
Makeup gain 7

What else could be causing the dips in volume during loud scenes?

What is the source? A video file with a multichannel audio track?

If you're playing such a file on a two-channel audio system, the dips in volume on loud segments is to prevent the stereo down-mix from going over 0 dBFS. Dolby and DTS multichannel stream usually have down-mix instructions in the metadata to prevent such a situation (I don't know if VLC reads that metadata), but, in any case, the player should always monitor the downmix version and apply audio compression when necessary to avoid going over 0 dBFS.

Maybe if you lower the volume control in VLC to 50 % (assuming the volume change is operated before the stereo down-mix), it will prevent the compression from kicking in.

Maybe if you lower the volume control in VLC to 50 % (assuming the volume change is operated before the stereo down-mix)

It isn't, thus this should make no difference.

I'd like to join this question, and i'm actually wondering whether i should file a bug-report.

Somehow i fail to get rid of the aggressive compression that is applied to the audio, and i don't even manage to set it to reasonable levels. It's actually so bad that i currently simply can't use VLC without having very annoying short, very loud peaks and in between sound i can hardly hear. Most speech is impossible to understand without risking blowing-up my speakers because of these peaks..

Tweaking the compressor-levels in the Audio Effects window seem to be actually doing something, but i can't get it to use acceptable levels. The "Enable" checkbox doesn't seem to be doing at all.

I would love to get this working properly again. But most important is the possibility to disable it completely, as i normally don't like to apply any compression at all.

For me the problem occurs regardsless of whatever media (with audio) i'm playing; Stereo mp3, stereo mpg4 audio only, or mp4 video wirh stereo audio.. uncompressed PCM audio (wav/aiff). Simply anything with audio suffers from it.

Should i file a bug-report?

Unfortunately the last version of VLC that doesn't include this dynamic compression by default is VLC version 2.0.1 from way back in 2012. That's the version I use today(in 2018) because I can't seem to turn it off either. When you are trying to listen to music with high bass parts, it turns the volume down so much to 'level out' the frequencies it makes the music un-enjoyable.
The other unfortunate thing is that governments around the world are making the makers of music equipment and software put these 'safeguards' in to reduce hearing loss. The end result : if I'm listen to music with high dynamic range, it kills the high (but short) parts of the song. Those short parts of the songs won't do any long term damage to your hearing. Pop music on the other hand already has a ridiculous amount of normalization,limiting and compression,(think loudness wars) which isn't even affected by these dynamic compression schemes.

Unfortunately the last version of VLC that doesn't include this dynamic compression by default is VLC version 2.0.1 from way back in 2012. That's the version I use today(in 2018) because I can't seem to turn it off either. When you are trying to listen to music with high bass parts, it turns the volume down so much to 'level out' the frequencies it makes the music un-enjoyable.
The other unfortunate thing is that governments around the world are making the makers of music equipment and software put these 'safeguards' in to reduce hearing loss. The end result : if I'm listen to music with high dynamic range, it kills the high (but short) parts of the song. Those short parts of the songs won't do any long term damage to your hearing. Pop music on the other hand already has a ridiculous amount of normalization,limiting and compression,(think loudness wars) which isn't even affected by these dynamic compression schemes.

Sorry, but what are you talking about? No compression is on by default in VLC

I would also like to jump in here, I use VLC on my PC for general listening of music and watching shows, however I have just recently begun recording and mixing live music. I use Audacity to do my mixing and any audio work but I like to play back the finished product to see what difference there is, if any, with another program, this is where VLC comes in. Absolute garbage at reproducing sound. I never knew how much it really messes with the sound till I went from Audacity's clean unadulterated reproduction to VLC's altered mess. There must be some way of disabling the filters that VLC automatically forces the sound through. I have never set any filter on in VLC yet it still alters sound levels. Really had me shaking my head and checking my headset for issues. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

@DaedalusWren: Hi, maybe you should create a new thread, as your issue might be wider.

could you try to provide the full logs so as to see what's enabled on your playback ?

I was experiencing similar issues and I found a solution, but VLC was not the culprit: In my Windows 10 Sound settings, on the Playback tab, under Properties for my playback device, there was a Dolby tab, and a Dolby Digital Plus filter was on. Needless to say, I had never turned it on; it must have been some sort of default setting. [EDIT: I missed that this was a Mac OS X thread, but maybe the thought to investigate the OS's settings is helpful!]

Thanks for your comment @jjbhi

Same here. The cause of my challenge was not VLC. But somehow outside VLC.

To fix this challenge, I simply used my OS, in my case Debian with GNOME, to increase the volume for my VLC playback app. The number 4 in this screenshot shows this VLC app volume I randomly moved.

Screenshot IDU_20220906_142707

Somehow, randomly moving this slider removed all the "filters". Even though no filter were activated in VLC. I'm guessing that changing the OS volume somehow reset the audio app output. Maybe a cached audio setting. Or maybe simply built up static in the physical wire or audio card. Which was cleared by moving this OS slider.

Today I've noticed that on an audio set the good parts got reduced in volume to like 10-20% for 5-7 sec and it's occurring 3 times in a row within 35sec and afterwards it still was not on full volume.
I've run the same song set through media player and it was not adapting volume. As it shouldn't.
I've tried various Audio Output Modules in VLC, save and restarting every time. Still automatically adjusted volume.
I've found this thread. I didn't tweak anything in the options but Global Key to Pause/Resume and Language for the UI.

Reading through this thread and some other suggestions I've checked following:
dynamic range, compressor, equalizer, filters in VLC settings, windows options, device options, device communication settings (the: do nothing), sound options, audio options, audio device, mixer options.
Nothing related to automatic volume changes was active or suggesting it would like to stick it's fingers to change volume.

I've tried VLC 3.0.8, 3.0.18 and 2.2.4. I've tried to activate and deactivate the checkbox "Normalize volume to:" default 2.00

Nothing helped. I pressed the "Reset Preferences" and it stopped adjusting volume automatically. Yet the checkboxes for normalization and stuff appear to be still the same.