Sorry about being an idiot at this type of stuff, but I've noticed on my new computer (Windows 10) that the loudest parts of music CD's that I play on it are way too loud, but the softest parts are way too faint or quiet. It surely wasn't like this on my old (previous) computer.
So are there any options on my new computer that will compress the dynamic range (again, sorry about being an idiot, but I'm not sure what I'm talking about when it comes to computers, audio, and music) so that the loudest parts are reduced in volume but the softest parts are made louder?
Please help...thank you very much!
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David K wrote:

Sorry about being an idiot at this type of stuff, but I've noticed on my new computer (Windows 10) that the loudest parts of music CD's that I play on it are way too loud, but the softest parts are way too faint or quiet. It surely wasn't like this on my old (previous) computer.

So are there any options on my new computer that will compress the dynamic range (again, sorry about being an idiot, but I'm not sure what I'm talking about when it comes to computers, audio, and music) so that the loudest parts are reduced in volume but the softest parts are made louder?

Please help...thank you very much!

Audacity has filters of various sorts.

It can reprocess a file for you.

But it's also possible the computer settings
are wrong at the driver level.

Please give some details, such as make and model and sub-model information. Dell Inspiron 1234-2236. Some computers, the "major" model number gives
the era, while the "minor" model number might specify the kitting of
parts inside.

You can also do:

Start : Run : devmgmt.msc (Device Manager)

and look at the Properties:Details of the analog sound device. Then
look for an item in Details called Hardware Ids.

HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_11D4&DEV_198B&SUBSYS_1043829C

Part of the information at the beginning, is the bus the
device was detected on. The HDAudio high-speed serial bus
has room for several HDAudio devices, but most of the
time there is only the one device. (The second device
could be part of a dialup modem.)

The VEN and DEV are the Vendor of the HDAudio chip (RealTek
maybe), the DEV tells you what chip it is. The SUBSYS traces
the HDAudio device to a specific motherboard model, but usually
there is no master list of what one is which. For example,
1043 is Asus, but we don't know what motherboard 829C is.

*******

There are two drivers available, both traceable to RealTek.

The bare-bones register level driver, is what Windows 10 downloads
from the Microsoft server. That, and some fairly plain looking
controls, provides ~1Vrms amplitude analog audio. There would
be no entry in Programs and Features control panel for this.
(Start : Run : control.exe to get to control panels, Pin to Taskbar)

But RealTek also makes a driver package which would include
their idea of a control panel. In there, you would look
for "special effects" and turn them off, if you thought
loudness compensation was being applied.

Summary: I would prefer to believe that none of your previous
files need to be edited in the way you suggest, and
instead, some "mutilation" at the driver level is involved.
Perhaps even, some cruftware that ships with the PC
that pretends to be "Gods gift to multimedia" :-)
An example of real-time processing on a PC, is the
graphic equalizer, which changes the gain as a function
of frequency.

https://i.postimg.cc/9z5GH1BN/realtek-audio-driver.gif [Picture]

Paul
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Thanks for all your help, but my new desktop computer is a Dell Inspiron 3880. Are there any free (completely free rather than a free trial or anything else) software programs or plug-ins that I can download and install to use with my Windows Media Player 12.0 that I have on Windows 10? Thanks again for any further help! I've also found "Quiet Mode" & "Loudness Equalization" being discussed on the Internet in reference to dynamic range compression with Windows Media Player and/or Windows 10, but I can't seem to be able to find them easily anywhere on my PC!
On Wednesday, August 4, 2021 at 1:46:11 PM UTC-4, Paul wrote:

David K wrote:

Sorry about being an idiot at this type of stuff, but I've noticed on my new computer (Windows 10) that the loudest parts of music CD's that I play on it are way too loud, but the softest parts are way too faint or quiet. It surely wasn't like this on my old (previous) computer.

So are there any options on my new computer that will compress the dynamic range (again, sorry about being an idiot, but I'm not sure what I'm talking about when it comes to computers, audio, and music) so that the loudest parts are reduced in volume but the softest parts are made louder?

Please help...thank you very much!

Audacity has filters of various sorts.

It can reprocess a file for you.

But it's also possible the computer settings
are wrong at the driver level.

Please give some details, such as make and model and sub-model information. Dell Inspiron 1234-2236. Some computers, the "major" model number gives
the era, while the "minor" model number might specify the kitting of
parts inside.

You can also do:

Start : Run : devmgmt.msc (Device Manager)

and look at the Properties:Details of the analog sound device. Then
look for an item in Details called Hardware Ids.

HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_11D4&DEV_198B&SUBSYS_1043829C

Part of the information at the beginning, is the bus the
device was detected on. The HDAudio high-speed serial bus
has room for several HDAudio devices, but most of the
time there is only the one device. (The second device
could be part of a dialup modem.)

The VEN and DEV are the Vendor of the HDAudio chip (RealTek
maybe), the DEV tells you what chip it is. The SUBSYS traces
the HDAudio device to a specific motherboard model, but usually
there is no master list of what one is which. For example,
1043 is Asus, but we don't know what motherboard 829C is.

*******

There are two drivers available, both traceable to RealTek.

The bare-bones register level driver, is what Windows 10 downloads
from the Microsoft server. That, and some fairly plain looking
controls, provides ~1Vrms amplitude analog audio. There would
be no entry in Programs and Features control panel for this.
(Start : Run : control.exe to get to control panels, Pin to Taskbar)

But RealTek also makes a driver package which would include
their idea of a control panel. In there, you would look
for "special effects" and turn them off, if you thought
loudness compensation was being applied.

Summary: I would prefer to believe that none of your previous
files need to be edited in the way you suggest, and
instead, some "mutilation" at the driver level is involved.
Perhaps even, some cruftware that ships with the PC
that pretends to be "Gods gift to multimedia" :-)
An example of real-time processing on a PC, is the
graphic equalizer, which changes the gain as a function
of frequency.

https://i.postimg.cc/9z5GH1BN/realtek-audio-driver.gif [Picture]

Paul

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David K wrote:

Thanks for all your help, but my new desktop computer is a Dell Inspiron 3880.
Are there any free (completely free rather than a free trial or anything else)
software programs or plug-ins that I can download and install to use with my Windows Media Player 12.0 that I have on Windows 10? Thanks again for any further help! I've also found "Quiet Mode" & "Loudness Equalization" being discussed on the Internet in reference to dynamic range compression with Windows Media Player and/or Windows 10, but I can't seem to be able to find them easily anywhere on my PC!

Audacity is free software.

You can even find the old versions.

http://www.oldversion.com/windows/audacity/

The version on my PC is 2.0.3, which is
from the year 2013. It's just a coincidence that
this is the last one uploaded to Oldversion.com .

On old versions of Audacity, some patent for MP3 was
still sitting around, so the LAME output plugin had
to be downloaded and added separately. On newer versions
of Audacity, that's no longer necessary. The Frauenhoffer
patent may have expired (something like that). And
MP3 might not be needed anyway, if you're just doing
output to .wav files.

*******

My typing PC (this one), doesn't have a Loudness.

The other PC has RealTek audio, has the actual Realtek Audio
driver installed, and it has the Loudness Equalization tick box.

https://i.postimg.cc/9z5GH1BN/realtek-audio-driver.gif [Picture]

The difference is "driver Digital Signal Processing", which
can include things like the graphic equalizer function (to
adjust the gain in the various audio bands), and also includes echo/reverberation ("Concert Hall") to the sound channel. There
are also include HRTF (Head Transfer Function?) transformations,
to change the number of audio channels. For example, properly
converting a 5.1 input audio signal from a movie, into a stereo
projection that does not lose stuff.

The plain Windows 10 audio driver may have some of these functions,
but the defaults should be for the functions to be "off". If you
install the custom driver, hunt it down, then you get a
control panel with some tick boxes, for control of the items.

You'd have to start in Device Manager (right-click Start and find it
in the list), do Properties on the audio device, get the Hardware ID,
and figure out what the audio is from there. The Windows 10 generic
stuff that automatically installs, I don't think it does a
particularly good job of telling you what your audio hardware is.
As an example, this is my non-RealTek hardware, with its idea of
toys and tick boxes, and this is without a separate driver hunt,
because a separate driver should not exist for this one. This
hardware was always driver-poor, and I don't think the company
even makes 48 pin PC sound chips any more. So where the functions
listed on the right came from, that's a complete mystery from
a corporate standpoint.

https://i.postimg.cc/fWcd79qV/soundmax-generic-decorations.gif [Picture]

That's a Soundmax HDAudio chip in a shielded box in a tiny plugin
card that goes in a combo PCIe/HDaudio wired slot. A kind of kooky
audio card :-) But at least it makes the computer sounds
like "you have mail" and so on. I've long since given up on
topics like "frequency response" or whatever :-)

Some of the audio drivers, you can't actually disable the special effects completely - this is why I do test cases, to catch the drivers
"doing stuff". You can take the LineOut from one PC, into the
LineIn of a second PC, and record the output, put in a "known"
synthetic waveform (trapezoidal pulse drawn in Audacity), then
observe by recording the waveform, how the stupid computer
made mush out of it. (In my case, I discovered reverb that
should not be there.)

By doing tests like that, you can also discover other neat
things, such as "there is no difference between 96000 sampling
and 192000 sampling on my PC - both have the same corner
frequency". Which negates the whole purpose of the HDAudio companies advertising how they doubled the sampling rate maximum frequency.
For nothing. The anti-aliasing filter is not properly set. So I
can't use a high quality piezo mike and listen to bats chirping :-)

Paul
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