Why do some movies play louder than others?

[JnEricsonx]

I have a HTC Thunderbolt-love it, but I do notice that some of my video/movie files play, well, LOUDER than others, even at max speaker volume, some are much easier to hear with some minor background noise around me, where others in the same situation would probably require needing headphones. Im just wondering if anything can be done, or is it just something baked into the file, etc?

 

[mikedt]

I'm sure it's due to the fact that many movies, especially big-budget blockbusters tend to have a very wide dynamic range in their soundtracks. Spoken dialogues may be rather quiet, while action scenes and music can be quite loud. Great in the movie theatre, not so good on a personal device like a cell-phone.

What you need is a way of compressing or levelling the dynamic range of the movie's soundtrack. TBH I'm not sure if there's any movie player apps that can do that. I know VLC offers dynamiic range compression on PCs. VLC is available for Android, not sure if it offers soundtrack levelling though, I've not tried it.