Captured audio low/quiet/soft

[binister]

Captured some VHS tapes through a Canopus ADVC110 via Firewire. The resulting audio on the clips is quite low. Is there any reason not to normalize the audio to the 90-100% level?

I tried playing the original audio and the boosted audio on a DVD played through my home theater. The boosted audio was obviously louder but I am not sure if there are any downsides. I have made sure all the clips avoid clipping (sections higher than 100 in my sound editor). As long as they remain below 100 does it really matter if I boost the levels?

For reference... normal TV audio is comfortable at 7 on my HT. The original audio required me to turn my volume up to 15 to hear it comfortably. The boosted audio only required me to turn the volume on my HT up to 3.

[Hawkes]

Any time you normalize or boost audio in any way, you affect the signal-to-noise ratio (a.k.a. the "noise" gets louder along with the audio itself). If there is any hissing, buzzing, white noise, etc. at all its going to get boosted, and VHS tapes often have some noise just as a result of the format. Adjusting the volume levels on your computer and re-capturing them louder is the only way to be sure you get the closest to the loudness of the original tapes. If you've already cranked the sound and you don't notice any irritating noise though, there's no reason to change what you've done.