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A Distortion Box is good for Guitars and TB-303s but not for Movies

So how can i force VLCs Volume Engine to not go over 100% ???

if it was me.....
i just wouldnt turn it up that loud

when u are in fullscreen u only have this slider display which indicates the volume and of course it doesnt tell you how much % your volume actually is.

i always have to switch back to windowed mode and look that volume isnt over 100%.

i dont know any other hard/software player with such an annoying behaviour.

what about an option like:

limit volume to 100% [X]

or better

add 400% volume [X]

and make 100% as default setting.

which coder is responsible for this. who do i have to conatct ?

which coder is responsible for this. who do i have to conatct ?

You could blame j-b

There are ways to avoid distortion within VLC.
1. Prevent VLC from permitting user adjustment of volume control > 200%: (edited: was 100%)
In Tools | Preferences
set Show Settings to All
In interface | Main Interfaces | Qt | Uncheck Allow the volume to be set to 400%
Save

2. In VLC Tools | Effects and Filters | Audio Effects tab | Graphic Equalizer tab
2a. If you don't use the Graphic Equalizer, uncheck Enable
2b. If you do use the Graphic Equalizer, set its Preamp slider correctly:
If the EQ band levels add up to greater than 0 (center), move the Preamp slider down (below 0) to compensate.
Note: If 2 Pass is checked, avoid high EQ gains.

3. Examine soundcard mixer settings. A common trap is to set Wave input level or Master volume level very low. This would tend to force the user to turn up VLC's level and/or EQ levels very high.

ok. graphic equalizer enabled and set to +6.0db is a workaround.

thx

Stop considering you are the center of the world... 200% might be useful to people.

I could make an option to stop at 100%

There are ways to avoid distortion within VLC.
1. Prevent VLC from permitting user adjustment of volume control > 100%:
In Tools | Preferences
set Show Settings to All
In interface | Main Interfaces | Qt | Uncheck Allow the volume to be set to 400%
Save

There's a minor bug in this option, in that it doesn't actually prevent the volume being set to 400% - it just prevents the volume UI element in single / full screen modes from making the change to 400%.

If you use your mouse wheel to change the volume though, it can still be turned all the way up to 400% even with this option enabled, which would seem to be an unintended behaviour.

As an aside, this option also doesn't prevent user adjustment beyond 100%, but rather beyond 200% (as noted in the mouseover text for the option), and by my own usage. That's fine with me though, because I never experience any distortion at 200% - only if I go beyond that volume do I have an issue.

amended my prior post "100%" to" 200%"

I too would love this feature to be implemented.

Even better still, imo, would be to have the volume go from "negative infinity" to "0db". With a check-box option in the preferences to go above this with extra amplification. Say up to +12db.

As I see it this is VLC's only weak point. 50% volume certainly doesn't sound like 1/2 as loud. And always accidentally going over 100% and hence introducing distortion is really annoying.

With this is mind, I gotta give props to the VLC makers. Awesome job and so many thanks from me. Cheers.

I would also really love an option to limit max volume (via any method) to 100%. I'll admit that VLC does a good job of not sounding distorted at over 100%, but of course anytime you increase volume over 100% you actually are distorting, and if an audio source is mastered properly then you'll always have at least soft clipping at certain points without going more than several percent above 100% volume. For most users it probably doesn't make a difference at 100-150% or maybe even 200% but if you have the equipment and the ears to hear it every little bit of distortion just makes you cringe. Maybe I come across as too picky but there are a handful of people out there who can sometimes hear a noticeable difference between even the highest bitrate mp3 and wav or flac. We are the ones who would really appreciate an option to cap volume at 100%.

If you guys actually do code this option, maybe a nice sub-option for those of us who have the good equipment and hate distortion of any kind would be to have an optional hotkey you could hold while adjusting the volume (similar to the options some digital cameras have to stop zooming at the end of optical zoom before allowing digital zoom) to temporarily allow higher than 100% volume levels for those times when a source is just mastered at too low a level and bumping it up via software doesn't actually wreck the signal.

Thanks guys!

I would second this. Please provide an option to have 100% as max in the VLC interface. It's just too annoying right now because it's so different from other media players. Lowering the volume is something I do very often, and when I want to go back to 100% I simply drag the slider to the maximum. But that won't work with VLC; if I do that, my speakers will explode And I'm having a hard time finding what 100% in the slider is. Well, actually it's impossible to find out what 100% in the slider is, not just hard.

I consider this a bug and it would be nice to see it fixed.

Until 100% limit is implemented, you can control startup volume in two places:
First, in Tools/Options Show Settings: check ALL.
1. To pick a fixed startup volume (0-1024 corresponds to 0%-100%):
in Tools/ Options/ Audio - "Default Audio Volume" (overridden by (2)).
2. To save your last volume setting at exit, and restore it at startup:
in Toole/Options/Interfaces/Main Interface/Qt - "Automatically save the volume on exit" - CHECK.

I already have those options enabled. My problem is that when I change the volume while watching a movie, how do I set it back to 100% without stopping the movie and restarting VLC? Is there at least some hotkey that sets 100%?

Hm. Dunno. No, there's no 100% hotkey.
But here's a bad idea: if set the Audio Step Size to 256, you can get to 100% with Ctrl-Down, Ctrl-Up.
This won't help you if you prefer to set volume with the keyboard or mousewheel. But if you use the mouse pointer to set volume, you're golden.

Stop considering you are the center of the world... 200% might be useful to people.

I could make an option to stop at 100%

Doesn't have anything to do with somebody considering himself to be the center of the world. Especially if he just asks the player to behave like every other media player in the world.

But then comes some arrogant piece of --please stay polite-- Coder, like its everywhere today, who feels the need to jump on users for having a simple question/request.

Doesn't have anything to do with somebody considering himself to be the center of the world.

Arriving to a thread, later than the party, when this thread has been edited, and giving its opinion without knowing what was said but coming to insult volunteers developers is quite outrageous...

Especially if he just asks the player to behave like every other media player in the world.

Almost all media players have over-amplification. Did you see that most of them do not display any dB and % ?

But then comes some arrogant piece of --please stay polite-- Coder, like its everywhere today, who feels the need to jump on users for having a simple question/request.

Arrogance and insults are mainly coming from you...

And, btw, the feature is already implemented. Please go away with your hatred.

I have been looking for an option to limit the volume at 100% from day 1 since I started to use VLC. I love the player, except for this one feature. I understand that there are uses for digital attenuation beyond 0 dB. However, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that the player has a default volume slider going beyond 100%. The ability to have a gain beyond 0 dB should be ONLY possible through the use of the equalizer, for the sake of ease of use and simplicity. The equalizer is EASILY accessible from the interface, it is one click away, and offers the tool to modify the replay gain for those that need it. When the need comes for it, I'm sure the people that want to boost their volume a little bit more will find it. That's why that Reply gain slider is there for, inside the equalizer, it is not for decoration. Currently enabling the equalizer causes about -11db to -11.7db at all sliders at 0 dB.

Most soundcards today have DACs with very high SNR at their output, with plenty of room to allow lower signals to be amplified by the amp/speakers without any perceivable noise. The noise is there, but only on theory. In other words digital attenuation from within the OS/sound interface controller/media player is a perfectly acceptable way to control the output volume. In an ideal world we would have properly mixed audio sources, with a full dynamic range, the volume set at 0 dB inside VLC using ASIO output, control the volume with an analogue attenuator after the DAC and before the preamps, but we don't live in a perfect world. What wins every time is having flexibility to suit the needs for all users.

I understand that true 0 dB is not possible, since Windows DirectX doesn't output "bit perfect" stream to the sound card. And having ASIO output is neither needed, nor necessary for any and all practical purposes, as far as music/video player is concerned. Some approximation is necessary, and every player does that. But most do it better, when it comes to numbers, and some come very close to 0 dB with their volume parameters (volume slider, equalizers, replay gain sliders, etc). Volume at 256/100% is 0 dB as far as DirectX is concerned.

I understand that enabling the equalizer causes another process and algorithms, in theory degrading the sound quality. How about taking the replay gain slider out of the "equalizer" process. This way a digital attenuation beyond 0 dB will still be possible without engaging the equalizer. The slider will act as a second "volume control", but logically will be placed in the right place, with a clear dB indicator below it.

So please:

- Limit the volume slider at ~0dB (100%)
- Make all settings inside the options that operate all the time at 0 dB as their defaults
- Increase equalizer replay gain, about +11 dB should be safe, and will prevent clipping at the 0 dB possitions
- Make the Replay Gain slider available for use even when the equalizer is disabled

Right now the workaround is enabling the equalizer and dropping the replay gain slider at about -6.8 dB. And no, this is NOT ideal workaround for people that are concerned about this. It does the job, but it is not elegant, it makes an awesome program look bad. I wrote this not because I can't change the output method, or I can't do what I suggested above, but because many of us here care deeply for this program, love it very much and use it every day.

Use 2.1.0 and limit the slider to 100%.

Thank you sir!
I was looking for this since a long time and got it to work really nicely from version 2.1.0.

For people that frequently mess around with volume control, here's what I did:

Limit maximum volume to 100%:
Tools > Preferences (All) > Interface > Main interfaces > Qt > Maximum Volume displayed : [ 100 ]

Disable mousewheel volume control to avoid changing it when scrolling while the focus is still on:
Tools > Preferences (All) > Interface > Hotkeys settings > MouseWheel up-down axis Control : [ Ignore ]

Suggestion to devs:

Since the volume level more likely needs to be adjusted at the beginning of a media file and stay the same until the end of it, wouldn't it be more comfortable to set the mousewheel to [ Ignore ] by default? I also think that the mousewheel control can be a problem when working on dual screens. Whenever you think that the focus is on a web page (ie: long-scrolling documentation) on the other screen and it's not, you may get a loud surprise

For the maximum volume level, perhaps only moving / copying the Maximum Volume displayed setting in Audio settings would help beginners to find it whenever they want to disable volume levels higher than 100%.

Hello,

Bumping this post / request

I'm on vlc-3.0.0-git-20140823-0402-win64 (lastest nightly)
And I can't find the option do limit the volume at 100%

This is what i have in "Qt", I found an option to limit the volume "display" ( ??? ) at 100, but it doesn't change anything, i can still go to 130% (and i would like to avoid that)



Thanks for your help

up !

I was looking for the same. I can show up to 100% but I want it really can't go to 200%, not just showing it.

+1, the current option is IMO fully non-sense... limit showing 100% but still allowing to set higher values... really? there should exist an option instead to completely limit volume to the configured value (no matter using mouse wheel, hotkeys, menu options, ...)

Hello!

This problem still exists in v2.2.6, the mouse wheel can scroll volume up to 200% even I limited the max volume to 100%, it's a really annoying bug!!

But VLC is still the best player IMO Many thanks to developpers