Can't hear most uploaded sounds...

[AudioVoyeur]

Hi all,

I'm new here, and let me say what a relief it is to know there are others like me. For a long time I thought I was diseased.

I've had a lot of great listening experiences but never recorded any. Now I have a new mission to provide clips to this community.

I've downloaded a few clips contributed by members, but the sounds are very faint, even when my PC volume and player volume are at maximum. What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Cheers
AudioVoyeur

[yeppie]

Hi Audivoyeur and welcome to the Community of the Audio Diseased.

I've downloaded a few clips contributed by members, but the sounds are very faint, even when my PC volume and player volume are at maximum. What am I doing wrong here?

There are a few explanations:

• A difficult recording situation (through the wall, long distance, lo-fi equipment like cell-phones ...) will often lead to a faint recording. This could be taken as a proof for authenticity.

• No or insufficient editing of the sound. Some contributors don't know how to edit their recordings, some don't like to. Adjusting the volume of a recording also increases disturbing noises. If you are not an expert in cleaning sounds, the result can be worse than the original.

• Your hardware: I experienced the same sound problems and improved the situation by using a better sound card. The second weak spot is my external headphone jack which is built in into a speaker on my desktop.

You can check the presuppositions on your side by listening to one of stingrayplayer's recordings. They are produced close to professional standards and should be loud enough without any volume adjustments.

If that does not help, consider increasing the sound level of the recordings using an audio editing software after downloading.

[MrAtkins]

You could try audacity which is a free audio editor, and has a useful amplify filter