Nine Quiet Chapters and a Speaker Already at Full Volume

12:40 PM on a Friday. Kofi Mensah had a turkey sandwich, two hours and twenty minutes of a resident reading Anne of Green Gables, and a 3 PM story hour at the assisted living home where he runs activities. He needed to make audio louder online, for free, on a work laptop that wouldn't let him install anything.

The Phone Was in Her Lap

Dolores Whitfield is 84 and taught fourth grade for thirty-one years. Over the summer she recorded nine chapters for residents who can no longer hold a book. Kofi gave her his phone with the voice memo app open, and she rested it in her lap, about two feet from her mouth.

The recordings sounded fine in headphones. At that morning's test in the common room, with the Bluetooth speaker at maximum, her voice came out thin and the ice machine down the hall won. Mr. Alvarez in the front row asked if it was on.

Audacity meant an IT ticket, and those took a week. The first website Kofi tried took MP3s only, one at a time, and sent each file to its server. His files were M4A. They were also recordings of a resident, and the home didn't want those on outside servers.

Searching "Make Audio Louder Online Free" at Lunch

He typed that into Google with one hand. The MyTools volume booster said the audio stayed in the browser and took up to twenty files at once, M4A included. There was no sign-up.

He dragged all nine chapters in. A note said the audio engine would download on first use, about 30 MB. The staff Wi-Fi took its time. He ate half the sandwich.

A Number Next to Every Chapter

Each file showed its peak level beside its name. Most sat around peak −16.2 dB. He didn't know exactly what that meant, but he could see chapter 7 was different: peak −6.3 dB. Then he remembered. Dolores's hip had been bad that week, and she'd set the phone on the table beside her.

The slider started at +6 dB. He tapped the +12 preset and pressed play on chapter 1, and the gain changed while it played. Her voice came up into the room. When he held the Compare button, it dropped back to the whisper from that morning. Let go, and she was back. Her breaths were louder too, and in chapter 3 someone's walker squeaked past the door. He left the limiter on, as it was by default.

Chapter 7 was the problem. At +12 the limiter kept the peaks from crackling, but she'd jump out of the speaker compared with the chapter before. The tool applies one gain to everything in a pass. So he removed chapter 7 from the list and boosted the other eight. Then he clicked "Boost more files" and ran chapter 7 alone at +6.

Both passes took about fourteen minutes. The eight came down as boosted-audio.zip, with names like chapter-3-+12dB.m4a.

Three O'Clock in the Common Room

He set the speaker to about two-thirds. Chapter 1 started, and Dolores's voice reached the back of the room without anyone leaning in. Mr. Alvarez didn't ask if it was on. He asked whether Anne was going to get the puffed sleeves.

Chapter 7 came up two weeks later and matched the others. Nobody noticed, which was the point.

Dolores listened from the second row with her eyes closed. "I sound old," she said afterward. Kofi told her she sounded loud.

What He'd Tell the Next Coordinator

Nothing got installed, there was no account, and it cost nothing. The part he cared about most was that a resident's voice never left his laptop. He also liked hearing the result before saving it, because he'd have guessed +6 and been wrong.

It has limits. A louder voice comes with a louder room, so the walker in chapter 3 is still there. And the files grew, from about 70 MB to about 200 MB, because the booster saves at 192 kbps and his voice memos were far lower. On a laptop that didn't matter.

It mattered when a resident's daughter asked for a copy by email, so he ran that chapter through Compress Audio. He also used Trim Audio to cut the opening of chapter 5, where Dolores spends forty seconds asking if the thing is recording.

Nine chapters, two passes, one free tab to make audio louder online, and a story hour people could hear. Try Boost Audio Volume for free →