How should my computer speakers be set?

Spectral Swallow

This is going to sound stupid, but I have never been able to set my computer speakers up right.
For example, I'll be playing music and I'll have to set it at 5% volume (in winamp) for it to be a decent volume. BUT in youtube videos I have to crank it all the way to 80% for it to be a decent volume. And then some videos it's 100%, others its 50%. Then when watching a movie in VLC, I have to crank that to around 130-160% for it to be a decent volume.
Basically I'm tired of always having to adjust random soundbars.
I DO have soundlock installed, but that just adds another dimension of confusion.
Am I missing something super obvious?

WiseManTobes

This is just the fun of random unregulated volumes across the board. I usually keep my speakers around 25-30%, while keeping base volume of computer around 50%, and usually that prevents being blown out by a loud video, but even then, is the odd one.

50% on the computer volume gives me a buffer to smash on the volume down hotkey on keyboard in those cases at least.

But, until a decent decibel regulator hits the market, we're all at the mercy of the volume set by the creator

Spectral Swallow

Knowing that it's not just me that has the problem, surprisingly, doesn't make me feel better.
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How is there not already some standard decibel range?

Khavall

Spectral Swallow wrote: »

Knowing that it's not just me that has the problem, surprisingly, doesn't make me feel better.
=/
How is there not already some standard decibel range?

Because as soon as there was one, some soap commercial would pump the EQ to flat and the intensity to +5 over the standard maximum, so their ads would catch your attention more.

Spectral Swallow

Khavall wrote: »

Spectral Swallow wrote: »

Knowing that it's not just me that has the problem, surprisingly, doesn't make me feel better.
=/
How is there not already some standard decibel range?

Because as soon as there was one, some soap commercial would pump the EQ to flat and the intensity to +5 over the standard maximum, so their ads would catch your attention more.

I'm like 99% sure that's illegal. Like wasn't there a court case about that?

Edit: Yep

Technicality

Different decibel ranges work best in different situations. Anyone who has ever tried to watch a film that has been mixed for cinema quietly late at night would have noticed that getting it so you can hear both the talking and the explosions without waking the neighbours is much harder than for say a TV series or a computer game.

Foomy

Right click on the speaker in your toobar, select the playback device your using to output to your speaker and then go to properties. Then go to enhancements and check mark the "Loudness Equalization" option.

It's an ok built in audio compressor that windows has, that should help keep things from getting too loud/soft. it's not great, but it's better then nothing.

I would go into Winamp and run ReplayGain on your song library, that will also normalize the volumes so you don't have to turn it up/down each time the track changes.

Siska

What Foomy suggested helps a bit. But yeah, it's not perfect. Elder Scrolls Online, which I have been playing a lot of lately, is freakishly quiet on my computer. To prevent various Windows sounds from blowing out my ears if I happen to forget to turn the volume down after playing, I simply turned off or down most of them.

Technicality wrote: »

Different decibel ranges work best in different situations. Anyone who has ever tried to watch a film that has been mixed for cinema quietly late at night would have noticed that getting it so you can hear both the talking and the explosions without waking the neighbours is much harder than for say a TV series or a computer game.

It's a pet peeve of mine that movies don't come with a built in "the kids are sleeping" setting, that you can pick. Where you can hear people talking while various disaster and alarm noises are muted to softer and gentler levels.

Spectral Swallow

Foomy wrote: »

Right click on the speaker in your toobar, select the playback device your using to output to your speaker and then go to properties. Then go to enhancements and check mark the "Loudness Equalization" option.

It's an ok built in audio compressor that windows has, that should help keep things from getting too loud/soft. it's not great, but it's better then nothing.

I would go into Winamp and run ReplayGain on your song library, that will also normalize the volumes so you don't have to turn it up/down each time the track changes.

I set the "Loudness Equalization" option, so hopefully that does some good. I tried the replay gain, but it is suuuper slow, like I have several thousand songs and each one takes about 5 seconds. So that may be something I do later on.
=D

Siska wrote: »

What Foomy suggested helps a bit. But yeah, it's not perfect. Elder Scrolls Online, which I have been playing a lot of lately, is freakishly quiet on my computer. To prevent various Windows sounds from blowing out my ears if I happen to forget to turn the volume down after playing, I simply turned off or down most of them.

You might try downloading 'soundlock', basically it prevents the sound from being too loud. It doesn't help make things louder though.
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WiseManTobes

Side note related to this topic, Games that don't notice your in game sound adjustments, until the game is loaded, can all go straight to hell.

Have a few atm, where once game loaded, it's a nice low volume, but the start up screens, are at like heavy metal concert levels