KMG_Dynamic_Volume20

Tired of adjusting the volume? Let this plugin do it for you !

This plugin automatically compensates for different recording levels. Just install and recording levels are a thing of the past.

You can also customize the dynamics control so that the really quiet parts can be heard without making the loud parts too loud. You can set the music dynamics to your taste, from Normal dynamics (as recorded) to almost no dynamics (quite passages are nearly as loud as the loud ones).

So if you have songs you can't quite make out without cranking up the volume, give it a try.

Enjoy

Kevin Gardiner

Staff review

Very helpful DSP plugin that auto adjusts the overall volume of your tracks. Comes in really useful when you have a bunch of different songs with varied volume outputs...instead of having to manually adjust the volume all the time, this will do it automatically for you. I did notice however, that a few songs I had (recorded from vinyl) sounded kind of weird... the pops and crackles seemed to confuse it, and the volume fluctuated too much. Overall, this plugin is great tho.

Comments

I wish I'd found this years ago. - I live in an apartment, and as some of my favorite music is pretty rowdy, it's nice to be able to count on the volume staying where I want it late at night. Very helpful plugin, thank you very much Mr. Gardiner. - December 1, 2008 by Kimberly Rodney

Good - Good, but a little slow in response sometimes, especially with Classical. - October 10, 2008 by Herb Stanley

To Rei Murasame - Rei Murasame your opinione is very interesting, may I contact you? - January 31, 2008 by Marta Fez

Nice Plugin! - I like how this is working right now! It sounds nice on my surround speakers, which surprised me. That said, my only complaint is that this plugin isn't skinned, therefore when I have it open, it's a bit gawdy. But, that's simple aesthetics :) Good plugin, regardless! Cheers! - March 9, 2007 by Pat Neeland

Heh - It makes Journey of a Sorcerer sound like crap. - March 3, 2007 by Travis Howard

Good plugin for what it's ment to do - Nice plugin for creating an even volume of all the songs in a playlist without having to actually change the original file ( i.e. Mp3Gain ). When you have a large enough collection adjusting the volume every time you create a new playlist is not an option. And as far as some of the comments about this plugin go ... I have what anyone would consider a pro audio equipment but then there are cases when you just want to listen to music as some background noise. In those occasions you really couldn't care less about what level the studio guy thought you should listen to. So the bottom line is that the plugin is useful and does exactly what it's ment to. It's up to you to decide if you need this or not. - January 5, 2007 by George Kraev

:{ - I used to be able to use it. In newer versions of Winamp it does nothing but cause a "Plug-in executed an illegal operation" error. Until he decides to come out with a compatible version. This thing is useless to me. - October 26, 2006 by James Howard

Great for casual use - As a musician with studio experience, I have a pretty good ear. I prefer all the original dynamic range when I'm *actively* listening to music (e.g. at home). My use for this plug-in is at work, in cubeville, where people like to have (sometimes loud) conversations just an arms-length or two away while I'm trying to concentrate. I passively listen to mask out the distracting noise of other people. Since I like a variety of music - classical, jazz, rock, ambient / electronic, etc - the dynamic content can vary widely. Before this plug-in I found most classical music to be useless at work -- too many quiet spots. Now it's wonderful. I can stay focused instead of distracted by Mr. Blabbermouth over there. The instructions are minimal, and the sliders are clunky (e.g. the arrows are backwards). But results similar to most popular FM radio stations are easy to achieve. The settings I use are: 50, 20, 1, 1 (L to R). I found that the dynamics in the song "Foreplay" by "Boston" helped me find acceptible settings fairly quickly. - October 5, 2006 by Mike Cepek

From lively to dead - This is one of the countless useless plugins made by people who think they know what they are talking about. Kind of the same misunderstanding many people have about the old loudness function. It is not ment to make the music sound "cool" with more bass and high treble - but to compensate for the fact, that our ears are less sensitiv to low and high frequencies at low volumes. There is a reason why mucisians spend hours and hours (and i am talking about real mucisians, not the countless new pop-names and bands, where the "music" is mixed by the same money-makers - remember Stock/Aitken/Waterman from the 80's?) - but there is a reason why they spend hours ajusting the different instruments leves, to make a complete sound-image, that will have a good feel in your ears. The dynamic in a recording is what makes the music come alive and give you what's called the listening exprince. A good recording should be able to make the listener "fall" into a state of relaxation and enjoyment. "It makes everything sound the same- I love it" someone says. Everything sounds the same? - that's what I call dull and bring. Serious moviewatching would be a complete waiste using something like this. And if ypu need a plugin like this to hear the fine details in say a classical recording, then it is not the recording there is something wrong with - that's simply because your music-system is to cheap. A good hi-fi system makes you able to hear low fine details together with thunder roaring sounds at the same time - without making everything sound the same. - March 18, 2006 by Kim Larsen

not what I was looking for - I don't know why someone can't make a volume leveler that only levels between songs. Unlike most of the users on here, I don't want it leveling every note. I listen to a variety of older and newer songs and the old songs are always mixed quieter than the new stuff, causing me to constantly have to turn the volume up and down. Basically I just wanted something that will turn up the quiet songs for me. I don't want it messing with the dynamics within each song. Unfortunately this plug-in doesn't make that distinction, so to me it's utterly useless. - March 15, 2006 by die scum

Simple & effective - This program is excellent and aside from getting the settings just right, this is a no nonsense easy way to get amazing sound and even volume leveling. It brought up soft sounds, evened volume differences between songs, gives music a punch like I've always wanted and best of all, don't need to mess with the volume anymore. I found that it's best to set the vol dyn at 30, the max gain at 3, the gain attack at 100, and the hiss at 0. If only someone knew of an equalizer that would automaticly adjust for a consistant tone quality, I'd be in heaven. If such a thing exists, I'd appreciate any leads sent to [email protected] - March 5, 2006 by Bob Snyder

From bad to worse. - I'm not even sure where I should begin, because although this plugin does what it claims to do, the opinions expressed in some of the previous reveiws are rather depressing. There are those of you who were under work conditions, or in an environment where the social situation and/or the fidelity of your hardware lent this plugin some kind of constructive usefulness. This makes your processing the sound and killing the dynamic range of the audio somewhat forgivable. However, there are others who seem to be in the dark about what the difference is between 'compressing out of necessity', and 'compressing just because you can'. Despite how well this plugin works, it is inherently *destructive* to your overall listening experience. There is no reason why someone like Randy Ali (below) should *ever* be using this plugin for CD recording, ever. You've got a gigantic dynamic range in CD audio, why on earth would you want to compress it and raise the volume? Did it occur to you that this is basically distorting the artist's intent (even more, because many of your sources for ripping mp3s have *already* had this processing done on them, so you're just doubling it and doing it again) by putting your music through this? I would not listen to your CDs, they'd be too hard on my ears. Cooky Cooky, made a very damning comment as well, about 'everything sounding the same'. Let's stop for a moment and ask ourselves if that's a good thing. When you've got this wall of sound slamming itself at you, how do you enjoy the subtlties of the music? The result is that your brain cannot perceive the depth to it, and tries to shut it out as disorganized noise, because its all close to the same level. At the same time, you consciously are trying to listen to the result of this processing, which takes more effort, and you quickly become disinterested or mentally fatigued. Basically, you aren't listening to the music, and interpreting it, you're being *assaulted* by it and then you have to filter it mentally. Try using the settings that Randy Ali suggested, and see how long you can last at a decent volume before you get a serious headache. Moving on - Hillel Aftel I'll deal with next, who decided to use it to completely remove the dynamics of movies that he/she is watching. Answer me one question. Can you accurately localise sound (ie, judge placement and distance) in a movie scene, if everything is at the same level? I thought not. Way to rob yourself of an immersive experience, congratulations. These are by far some of the worst uses for this plugin imaginable. The solution to your problems are simple - if you are for some reason oh so afraid of having some things louder than others, *USE HEADPHONES*. Honour the intent of the artist. For everyone else, this plugin is only useful if you are using *lo-fi* equipment, and need to narrow the dynamic range to accomodate for it. If you are using this on any hi-fidelity system, there is absolutely no reason to even consider using this, at all. So most of you who reveiwed this plugin have been making poor recommendations, and leading other users into a dull and flat audio experience. The plugin is good, but you're all using it when its *not made for you*. - December 13, 2005 by Rei Murasame

MUST HAVE for At Work Listening - This is exactly what you need when you can't crank it, but you can't really hear it either.. Fixes everything volume related. (I MuchFX it as the first plugin with Enhancer and Adapt-X second.) - December 6, 2005 by JimmyDean Sausages

Awesome dynamic range compressor - I've been looking for this forever. It was one of the things that prevented me from using winamp for a long time. It works very well, the attack and release times are not too fast nor too slow. The sound isn't choppy . There is no static. It just works. Great job! - November 1, 2005 by Eric Carlsen

Easy to use, Works great! - Works exactly as described. It must be adjusted right. Vol Dyn 100%. Max Gain 100%. Gain Att 50%. Hiss Red 5% or else too much of the treble disappears. It must be used in conjuction with another DSP. I use Much FX to combine the DSPs together. Use KMG Dyn Vol together with Enhance 0.17 and you have great audio. Excellent to make MP3's sound great and make Hifi Cds recording. I Highly recommend!!! - August 20, 2005 by Randy A

Brilliant - Makes everything sound the same! love it! - August 7, 2005 by cooky cooky

Great for Classical - I can only hear 1/2 my song at work when I listen to classical, their just too quiet at work. This Plug-in fixes that by letting you select the dynamic range limit and the max increase of low volumes among other things. Perfect! - July 6, 2005 by george camann

Most Useful Plugin Ever - Listen to Beethoven's 6th with this on, you'll hear things you've never heard before. Ok, so you don't like Beethoven. This plugin still rocks. Ever try playing music late at night, but trying to keep it reasonably quiet for sleeping people is a real chore? What with the volume differences between and even within songs, it's hard to keep your hand off the volume control for more than a minute at a time. This little baby does all the adjusting for you in real-time, and does it pretty darn well. Go ahead, turn up those songs that are quiet in the beginning but surprise you with loud points. No more jumping out of your skin. No more pesky stress-related nosebleeds. This is especially useful for those full-length Divx movies you kids like to spend entire days downloading. Don't you hate how the calm dialogue is always so low you have to max out your volume, but when the action comes it's so loud your head explodes? Literally? Ok, not literally. Well, get this plugin, play your movies through Winamp, set the main "Volume Dynamic" slider in this plugin's configuration to "0" (most compensation) and watch your movies all the way through without even touching your volume knob. Not even once, I tell you. Unless your girlfriend is trying to say something. Then you might have to turn it up. PS. The current version of Winamp plays movies better and faster than any other player anyway (including Windows Media Player), so you should be using it for your movies anyway. Two bugs though: The buttons in the configuration sliders to move the sliders up and down are reversed - up makes it go down and down makes it go... well, you can figure out the rest. Also, the first split second of some audio files tend to be unnaturally loud while this plugin is running. Not sure what that's all about. Also, it's not a pretty plugin. The one configuration window is so simple it's almost ugly, and the help consists of a poorly-formatted dialogue box. But it doesn't need to be pretty, it just needs to work, right? And that it does. All in all a fantastically useful and well-made plugin. Kudos. Five stars despite the bugs and ugliness. I probably would've even paid for it, despite my strict policy of never paying for anything ever. - April 3, 2005 by Hillel Aftel

great - Great. Reminds me of my DBX compressor...awesome job. - March 11, 2005 by phineas walrumple

ah - ... this plugin is ridicolous... why people keep making stuff useful only for cleaning asshole? Great sound processor plugin already have been made... did u hear some about Tomass Limiter or Sound Solution? Those have powerful alghoritms that really effects sound... and they are free professional stuff... check it on winamp plugins... - March 10, 2005 by jack nerchia

KMG DYNAMIC VOLUME 20 - I think this plug-in is the f...... bomb!!!! It works so goooood. Check this out and read it. Download it now. - March 9, 2005 by Joe Audia