Quicktime Question

Hello,

I live in a small apartment with thin walls, and I like to watch movies on my computer late at night. The issue is that with the mixing of most movies, you have to have it at a certain audio level to hear the dialogue, then when a gunfight breaks out everything is suddenly 5x the volume. I was curious as to whether there was a plug-in or feature in quicktime or a similar program that allows you to sort of compress the audio-track output for a clip so that the highs and lows are more balanced, or to clip the extreme highs... Sort of a 'night-mode' setting. I am aware that this will make it sound terrible, but if it saves me some grief from the neighbors, I'll be more than happy to live with that.

What you are looking for is something that will do what is knows as "dynamic range compression." There is nothing that will do this easily and inexpensively for the Macintosh. You could spend a lot of money on software and external devices, and you could do it with external speakers, but I doubt that you would find this option acceptable.

You could use this product:

Hear ($50)
Sound Improvement for iTunes, Sound Enhancement for Mac, 3D Sound, Equalizer for Mac

...which doesn't do dynamic range compression, exactly, rather it just sets a threshold for music sound peaks. You might find this acceptable.

Ultimately, the best option would be to get a good set of stereo headphones. That would have the dual advantages of not disturbing your neighbors, and giving you much better sound quality than you have now.

There are even wireless headphones that you could use that wouldn't be terribly inconvenient. e.g.:

AudioCubes.com - Surround et Sans Fil

Amazon.com: Logitech Wireless Digital Bluetooth Headphones for MP3 Players iPods and Computers: Electronics

Amazon.com: Sennheiser RS 130 Wireless Surround Sound Headphones: Electronics

Amazon.com: Motorola S805 Bluetooth 2.0 (DJ Style) Stereo Headphones: Electronics

There is a feature in many apps (like VideoLAN and Plex) called 'audio normalization'. I think that's what you're looking for.