Putting my blu-rays on a hard drive and most voices on them seem really low. I can break out the audio using MKVToolNix, and bring it into Audacity. I’ve tried Legacy Compression with not much results.
Does someone know a good way to boost the voices just slightly ?
Maybe just try Amplifying or Normalizing the center channel.
If that doesn’t do it, try the Limiter (with make-up gain, or Amplify/Normalize after limiting). Limiting is a fast-kind of dynamic compression. It’s easier to use and less likely to have unwanted side-effects compared to traditional compression.
You said “slightly” but I suggest starting with a threshold of -6dB. It’s going to work on the highest peaks so you may need even more limiting & make-up gain to get useful results.
BTW - A lot of people turn-up the center channel on their AVRs to boost the dialog (most dialog is in the center). If you’re plying back on your soundcard that might not be possible. A lot of movies are very dynamic with loud effects and when you turn the loud parts down to a reasonable “home level” the dialog gets too quiet.
Most AVRs also have a dynamic compression setting, “DRC” or “Midnight Mode”.
I’m also boosting the volume slightly using Handbrake, since the general volume of some Blu-rays seems softer, probably the dynamic range in general. After doing a slight bit of research about sound in general in movies, it doesn’t seem to have a very good track record. The audio part doesn’t get half as much effort as the special effects and video . Too bad since what the actors and actresses say is pretty important.
I thought after doing an EQ that might help bring the voices forward, but I’m not sure what range to use.
OK, but that’s no different than turning-up the volume when you watch the movie, unless it’s also compressing.
There are “standards” that leave headroom for the dynamics, so on-average movie volume is lower than CDs or MP3s, etc.
I think it depends on the movie, and in the theater everything is usually LOUD so you can usually hear the dialog and then you get blasted with the sound effects.
You do have an actual center speaker, right? You don’t get the same “clarity” in the stereo downmix. (It’s complicated and related to acoustics but the mixing engineer is hearing the center speaker and he adjusts the mix differently than if he was making a stereo mix.)
You can’t do that much because dialog and most other sounds cover most of the frequency range and you can’t really isolate dialog. You can get-away with cutting the bass and the very-high frequencies but that’s not going to solve your problem.
Boosting the highs (maybe around 5kHz) will boost the “T” and “S” sounds which can help with intelligibility.
Don’t actually have a center speaker I use all the time, but I do have a Yamaha YAS-107 soundbar. Problem is my spouse doesn’t really like using it, so I’m stuck with the TV speakers. Great article BTW, almost as good as the Loudness article I read years ago, that I knew nothing about.
I also EQ my CD’s as over the years they have some really great ones, and others not so great, funny I see now why cutting is much more useful than adding, but a combination can do wonders to a recording.
Isn’t there an OpenVINO AI available for Audacity that will separate voice and instruments? That might be helpful to isolate the words and increase the volume on them. I don’t really remember all the AI plugins. The only one I’m using is transcription.
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