Amplify quiet audio. Without distorting it.
That lecture you recorded with your phone in your pocket. The voice memo where you forgot to hold the phone up. The Zoom call where one person was on a laptop mic in another room. Drop it here, pick how many dB to boost, and we'll lift the level with a soft limiter so it gets louder without clipping. No DAW, no Audacity, no upload.
drop your quiet audio file
MP3, WAV, M4A, voice memos, lecture recordings. One file at a time.
How dB boost actually feels
- +3 dB — twice the power. Noticeable but small. Good for "just a touch."
- +6 dB — double the amplitude. Sounds clearly louder. Most common one-click boost.
- +10 dB — roughly double the perceived loudness. Significant; voice goes from "I can barely hear" to "okay, I hear it."
- +15 dB — rescue territory. Phone-in-pocket recordings come back to life. Background noise becomes obvious.
- +20 dB — maximum useful. Past this you're mostly amplifying noise. Try this only if nothing else worked.
Amplify vs normalize — which do you want?
Amplify: "make this exact amount louder." You set the dB. Useful when you want to match a known reference or you know the source is quiet by a specific amount.
Normalize: "make the loudest point hit the target." We figure out the gain automatically based on the peak. Useful for putting a whole batch of mismatched recordings at the same level.
If you're not sure, try normalize first — it's the safer default. Come here when you specifically want a fixed boost.
When amplification can't save the file
Some recordings are too quiet to rescue:
- The signal is below the noise floor. Boosting makes the noise as loud as the voice; the result is louder hiss, not louder speech.
- The phone or mic was pinned at minimum input gain and never moved. Some apps clip a dead floor that no software can boost.
- The recording is mostly silence with rare quiet voice. Amplifying makes silence into hiss. Combine with silence remover first.
If even +20 dB doesn't work, the source is the problem, not the tool.
FAQ
What's a dB?
Decibels — a logarithmic unit for loudness. +6 dB is double the amplitude. +10 dB is roughly double the perceived loudness. Negative dB is quieter (which is why "0 dB" on a meter is the loudest, not the quietest).
Will the file get bigger after amplifying?
WAV: same size (uncompressed). MP3: very slightly bigger if you re-encode at the same bitrate, because louder signals compress slightly differently. Not enough to matter.
Should I amplify before or after compressing to MP3?
Before, if you have a choice. Amplify the highest-quality source you have (WAV, the original recording) then encode. If all you have is an MP3, amplifying it here is fine — we decode it back to audio first.
Why does my amplified file sound the same?
Probably because the original was already loud enough that the limiter caught most of the boost. Run it through our normalizer instead — that'll tell you whether there's headroom to grow into.
Can I make a file softer (negative dB)?
Not on this page — we only boost. For attenuation you can normalize to a lower target (e.g., -12 dB) using the normalizer.
Does my audio get uploaded?
No. Everything runs in your browser tab.
How do I make a quiet MP3 louder?
Drop the MP3 here, pick a gain amount (6 dB doubles perceived loudness, 10 dB is a big boost, 20 dB is roughly max for already-recorded voice). Click Amplify. We'll boost the signal and limit it just below clipping so it doesn't distort. Download the louder file.
What's the difference between amplify and normalize?
Normalize sets the loudest peak to a target level (usually -1 dB or -3 dB). Amplify adds a fixed amount of gain regardless of where the peaks are. If you want "as loud as it can go without clipping," use our normalizer. If you want "a specific amount louder than before," use this.
Won't boosting make it clip and distort?
We apply a soft limiter at -0.3 dB so peaks can't go past digital max. If you ask for more gain than the file can take, the limiter just catches the peaks — no harsh clipping, just a slight smoothing of the very loudest moments. Anything in the body of the audio is fully boosted.
What about noise — will it get louder too?
Yes — amplification raises everything proportionally, including background noise. If the source is hissy, the result will be louder hiss too. For voice recordings with bad noise, use our silence remover first (cuts dead-air gaps) and consider denoising in a DAW before amplifying.
How much is too much amplification?
For a typical recording, 6-10 dB is a big audible difference. 15-20 dB is the upper end for usable audio — past that, you're mostly boosting noise. If you need more than 20 dB, the original recording probably had a fundamental input problem; consider re-recording if you can.
Does it upload the file?
No. Everything runs in your browser. The file never leaves your machine.