How to Make Volume Louder Than Max Without Distortion

How to increase volume beyond the maximum

1. Add Sound Booster Max to Chrome on your computer.
2. Play the quiet audio in a tab and click the green icon. A small control window opens.
3. Raise the slider above 100%. It goes up to 600%, in steps of 10.

That is the whole process. The rest of this guide is about choosing the right level.

What the percentages mean

Each doubling adds about 6 dB. An increase of around 10 dB is what most people hear as "twice as loud", so 300% to 400% is already a large change.

Why boosted audio distorts

Digital audio can only represent levels up to a fixed maximum. Think of it as a ceiling.

• A quiet recording sits far below the ceiling. You can multiply it several times before its peaks touch the top.
• A loud recording, such as modern music or an advert, already has peaks close to the ceiling. Multiply it and the peaks hit the top and are flattened.

That flattening is called clipping, and it sounds like crackle, buzz or fuzz on the loudest moments. A booster cannot create more room above the ceiling. No software can.

Finding the loudest clean level

1. Set your computer's system volume to a normal, comfortable level.
2. Start the booster at 150%.
3. Go up one or two steps at a time and listen to the loudest part of what you are playing.
4. At the first sign of crackle, go back one step. That is your clean maximum for that audio.

Sound Booster Max helps by marking the slider above 400% as a quality-warning zone and showing a "Quality Warning" label there. Below it, most quiet material stays clean.

What you can and cannot boost cleanly

• Quiet speech, lectures, old recordings: lots of room. Often clean at 300% or more. See making quiet speech clearer.
• Films and series: dialogue has room, action scenes do not. Pick a level for the dialogue and expect loud scenes to be loud.
• Modern music: very little room. Beyond about 150% you will usually hear distortion. The same applies when making Spotify louder.

A booster is not an equalizer

Boosting raises every frequency by the same amount. It does not add bass, sharpen treble or even out loud and quiet passages. Sound Booster Max does not include an equalizer or bass control. If your sound is thin rather than quiet, an equalizer extension or better speakers will help more than extra volume. Our guide to the types of sound extension, including equalizers, explains the difference.

Speakers have limits too

Small laptop speakers start to rattle before the signal itself clips. If you hear buzzing from the laptop body at a level that sounds clean in headphones, the speakers have reached their limit. See the laptop volume booster guide for alternatives.