Booster Volume

Audio Troubleshooting

Audio problems are easiest to solve by narrowing down where the fault sits: the source file, the application, the operating system, or the hardware. Each page here starts from a symptom and works through the possibilities in the order most likely to resolve it.

The general method

Four tests that isolate almost any audio problem in a couple of minutes.

  1. Try a different file

    If other audio is fine, the problem is the file, not your equipment. Boost it and move on.

  2. Try a different application

    If one app is quiet and others are not, it is an application or per-app volume setting.

  3. Try different headphones or speakers

    If everything is quiet on one output and fine on another, the output device or its driver is the issue.

  4. Try another device entirely

    If your headphones are quiet on every device, the headphones are the problem.

Isolate before you change anything

The reason audio problems feel intractable is that four separate layers can each cause the same symptom, and people tend to start changing settings in whichever layer is most familiar rather than the one at fault. The source file, the application playing it, the operating system, and the hardware are all capable of producing silence or a level that is too low.

The four tests below narrow it to one layer in about two minutes, and they work in any order you like as long as you change only one thing at a time. Skipping them is what leads to an afternoon of driver reinstalls for a file that was simply recorded quietly.

By symptom

By platform

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