Change Audio Volume

Changing volume multiplies every audio sample by a gain factor — 200% doubles the amplitude, 50% halves it. Boosting too far can clip (distort) the loudest peaks, so the tool clamps samples to the valid range to keep things clean.

Normalize is the safer way to get maximum loudness: it finds the single loudest sample and scales the whole file so that peak sits at full scale, raising the level as much as possible without distortion. All processing is done locally and nothing is uploaded.

Typical candidates are recordings made too far from the microphone: voice memos, lecture captures, interviews on a phone lying on the table. A boost also helps when you are combining clips from different sources — a podcast intro recorded at home next to a segment recorded elsewhere — since matching their levels first saves listeners from riding their own volume control. Quiet music beds behind narration are the reverse case, where a reduction does the work.

The output format is worth a moment's thought. WAV stores the adjusted samples uncompressed, so nothing further is lost — the right choice if the file is headed into an editor for more work. MP3 is far smaller and fine for voice notes, sharing and casual listening, but it is lossy, so avoid running audio through repeated MP3 encodes; each generation discards a little more detail.