Audio volume adjustment — Input checklist

Worked example

Before raising the volume, find out how much room the loudest peak leaves: if it already touches the top of the waveform, a boost will only clip it.

Play the file twice with different goals. First listen to the quietest passage and ask whether the words are audible at all, then jump to the loudest laugh, cough or music cue and watch whether it fills the waveform. The Volume control applies one fixed multiplier from 0% to 200% to the whole file, so a recording with a very quiet voice and loud peaks will not be evened out by it.

Think of a voice memo recorded in a parked car: the speaker sits at roughly half the level you want, but a door slam near the end is already near full scale. Boosting to 200% would double everything, including that slam, so the slam decides the safe limit.

A common mistake is expecting more volume to rescue a noisy recording. Background hiss and room tone rise by exactly the same amount as the voice, so if the noise is already distracting at 100%, plan to re-record or clean it elsewhere.

Do a quick check on the source format as well. A heavily compressed 64 kbps MP3 that was exported too hot has damage baked in that no gain setting can undo, so prefer the original WAV, M4A or MP3 you recorded from, and write down the highest percentage you think you can afford.

Quiet voice with louder peaks

Adjusted track; peak check required

The control is a plain gain change with no limiter, so always judge the available headroom by the loudest peak, not by the quietest word.