The VideoLAN Forums

Am I just missing something? It seems like VLC will do everything under the sun, but I can't find any compressor/limiter/enhancer for the audio. Even just a limiter with one adjustable slider would be a major improvement. The funny thing is, I haven't found this feature in ANY player, even though it's been the feature I've wanted most for at least 10 years. The problem, as I'm sure many people here know, is that many videos have weak audio during the conversations, and ear-splitting, speaker-damaging levels when the phasers start firing (of course, Hollywood could fix this by hiring professional audio technicians who know the difference between making a movie exciting and making a movie ANNOYING, but I'm not gonna hold my breath on that one). Basically, I don't want my explosions any more than maybe 20% louder than my conversations (rather than 5 to 10 times louder, as seems to be the fashion today). Ideally, what I'd like to see is something where I can throw out all the audio below say -45db, enhance the low stuff from -45 to -30, leave alone the audio from -30 to -20, compress stuff from -20db to -12 db, and severely limit anything that goes over -12db. These numbers are just approximate. Perhaps have a simple interface (one slider or perhaps an automatic mode) and an advanced interface where experts can fine-tune their dynamics. Being able to save presets would be a big plus. And of course, I'd like to do this "inaudibly", with as little annoying artifacts as possible.

Is there some way to do this with VLC? Has anyone requested this before?

Perhaps this same "circuitry" could be used to even out the volumes of songs in a playlist, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

Bill Allyn

A Compressor is coming for 1.2.0