Boosting Audio Volume with MaxxPlayer: Does It Really Work?

[Jason Dunn]

Suhit <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8882">posted about Maxxplayer</a> a few months ago, and I was curious to see if it worked for a very specific scenario I had in mind. I have a Fujitsu P7010 laptop, which is a wee thing with a 10.6" LCD widescreen and fairly small speakers. As such, audio loudness is not something it excels at. Because it's so portable, I find myself taking it with me fairly often, and quite often I end up showing family/friends video clips that I've saved. Here's where the scenario always falls apart: the built-in speakers on the P7010 aren't loud enough unless the room is <i>very</i> quiet. I was at a Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago (Canadian Thanksgiving is in October) and some family members were talking about <a href="http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/nuvideos/UNORIGINAL.CO.UK%20-%20terrys_world_.wmv">Terrible Terry Tate</a>. I happened to have my laptop there with four of his video clips. I queued them up, and two people had to lean into the speakers just to hear them. Eventually they took the laptop to another room just so they could hear the audio. I <i>really</i> wish Fujitsu had put louder speakers in this thing. :roll:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/maxxplayer-quicklook.jpg" /><br /><!><br />So when I got back I wanted to take <a href="http://www.maxxplayer.com/">MaxxPlayer</a> for a spin and see if it would help. It definitely does! The install is pretty straightforward, though I dislike it when programs ask me to reboot before they'll work. MaxxPlayer is a plugin for Windows Media Player 10, so it shows up under the plugins menu. There are a few ways you can configure it: music or spoken word audio, different speaker types (2.1, notebook, etc.), and you can tweak the audio by adjusting the MaxxBass, MaxxTreble, MaxxStereo, and iVolume. If you drop the trendy first half of each of those terms, you'll know exactly what they do. On my laptop speakers, the first three didn't do a whole bunch. I could tell the audio was changing, but on a laptop that small you're not going to hear much bass, no matter how you punch up the signal. The iVolume level is really where MaxxPlayer shines: the level goes up to +20dB, and while I didn't have any decibel measuring tools, any audio signal that's spoken word got a <i>lot</i> louder - I'd say at least twice as loud, which is exactly what I was hoping for.<br /><br />The boost in audio volume was much less noticeable with music, but it's usually already tweaked to be as loud as possible. I imagine this would make DVDs quite a bit louder as well. And if you listen to your laptop with headphones, you'll appreciate being able to tweak the audio with MaxxBass and MaxxTreble. The plugin <a href="http://www.maxxplayer.com/htmls/price.htm">is only $9</a>, which I consider a good deal to get that extra boost when you need it.<br /><br /><i>Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Alberta, Canada.</i>

[dirtboy]

Looks really cool. My question would be does it work for other applications that make use of MP as their player? One example would be MediaPortal.

Seems like all the videos I have are recorded at different volume settings. Since this plugin is for Media Player, does it follow that it it would be active any time Media Player is used to playback video? It would be great to have a plugin that effectively sets all of my video at the same volume level.

[Jason Dunn]

Looks really cool. My question would be does it work for other applications that make use of MP as their player? One example would be MediaPortal.

Unknown. You'd have to ask their tech support. I'd be inclined to say no, because my hunch is that when WMP is started "headless" by another process, just the core engine is started, not any plugins. But I could be wrong.

Seems like all the videos I have are recorded at different volume settings. Since this plugin is for Media Player, does it follow that it it would be active any time Media Player is used to playback video? It would be great to have a plugin that effectively sets all of my video at the same volume level.

WMP has a "Quiet Mode" plugin which does normalization, meaning it will take louder material and make it quieter, but it won't boost quiet things and make them louder. I'm not sure how MaxxPlayer would interact with the normalization in WMP.

[dirtboy]

Got a message in to tech support. I will post their reply when I get it.

[jeffd]

hehe, you wasted your money. ;)

If you let ffdshow do all your audio decoding needs, you have access to a plethora of plugins built into it, including a volume section that will let you amp the crap out of it. And since it is at the driver level, any program using windows decoders will also be using the plugins.

[Jason Dunn]

If you let ffdshow do all your audio decoding needs, you have access to a plethora of plugins built into it, including a volume section that will let you amp the crap out of it.

I tried ffdshow for a while and really didn't like it - it was a while ago, so I don't remember all the details, but I seem to remember getting frustrated at how it started up as a separate instance in the system tray instead of being integrated with WMP. But hey, at least it's free!

[dirtboy]

I haven't bought it yet.

I also tried ffdshow, but that program needs too much processor power to run smoothly. I don't have the cash to upgrade all 4 HTPC's to larger processors in order to use ffdshow. I would much rather drop 9 bucks, but it isn't looking like that is going to work either.

[jeffd]

Are we running the same ffdshow? ffdshow has no tray icon. Some splitters do.. but that has nothing to do with ffdshow.

Dirtboy, i'm surprised you say that, cause I exclusivly use ffdshow on this here celecrap 1.1ghz laptop because it can play my movies and anime smoothly where the default xvid and divx codecs require more cpu, and most of my high res anime shows are not playable with default codecs. And on shows that have free cpu, I can also add a sharpen filter for added clarity. I also needs to use ffdshows picture properties to add in color. For some reason the trident chipset's directdraw plumits saturation big time.

Theres only 2 problems i've seen with ffdshow, well 3 atm, 1 is in the audio codec, AC3 is bad.. real bad. Mpeg2 playback takes a bit of cpu but this may actually be the fault of trying to play vob files and not raw mpeg2. The 3rd is the last version of ffdshow broke its mpeg1 support some how. doh!

[dirtboy]

Perhaps we are speaking of two different versions of ffdshow. The one that seems to be offerred for download on most site (free-codecs.com, doom9, etc.) are all dated 10-14-2004. Thats the one I have. Are you by chance using a newer build? I have seen what appear to be interim builds on their main site, but hesitated to use one that wasn't "official". That might explain the differences we see.

Also, back on topic, I received a reply from MaxxPlayer. There reply boiled down to "Maybe. Try the demo." So I am downloading it now.

[jeffd]

Thats the one. Hasnt been updated since. :(

I also use ffdshow in my movie box, a small form PC I built with a nforce1 w/built in video motherboard. It has a nice cpu on it and I can really sweaten the look of my avi shows using all of ffdshows plugins.