Get Clearer Speech in Chrome With a Volume Booster Extension

Louder and clearer are not the same thing

A volume booster raises the level of everything in the tab equally. That is exactly what you need when a clean voice is simply too quiet. It is less helpful when the voice is buried under noise, because the noise gets louder too.

So it helps to know which problem you have:

• Clean but quiet. Boosting solves it. Raise the slider until the voice is comfortable.
• Quiet and noisy. Boost moderately and switch to headphones, which make speech easier to pick out than laptop speakers.
• Loud music, quiet dialogue. Common in films. Boosting helps you hear speech in quiet scenes, but loud scenes get louder too, so keep a hand near the slider. See quiet dialogue on Netflix and other streaming sites.

Setting up a Chrome volume booster for speech

1. Add Sound Booster Max to Chrome and pin its green icon.
2. Start the video, podcast or call in a tab.
3. Click the green icon. A small control window opens for that tab.
4. Raise the slider to about 200% and listen. Go up or down from there in small steps.

Speech usually has more headroom than music, so quiet voice recordings can often be raised to 300% or more before they distort. If you hear crackling on loud words, back off slightly.

Where it helps most

Online lectures and tutorials

Recorded lectures are often captured by a single camera microphone. Boosting the tab lets you keep your system volume at a normal level for everything else.

Podcasts and interviews in a web player

When one speaker is much quieter than the other, raise the tab until the quiet one is clear. The louder speaker will be loud, so settle on a middle setting.

Browser-based meetings

For calls that run in a Chrome tab, such as Google Meet or the web version of other meeting tools, the booster raises what you hear. It does not change how loud you sound to others. Desktop meeting apps that run outside Chrome are not affected.

Keeping a stable volume

There is no automatic levelling in Sound Booster Max. It applies the level you set and keeps it there. Because the setting is per tab, a comfortable level for a quiet lecture does not carry over and blast you when you switch to a music tab. In the extension's settings you can also choose the default level new tabs start at.

Some sites have their own levelling option. YouTube, for example, shows a "Stable volume" option in the player's settings menu on some devices and videos. It is worth trying alongside a booster; the YouTube volume booster guide covers it.

What a booster will not do

• Remove hiss, echo or background chatter.
• Change the tone of a voice. There is no equalizer. For that, look at other kinds of sound extension.
• Boost audio outside Chrome.