It doesn't let the audio clip/exceed safe volumes and always applies some sort of a limiter, even if it's disabled everywhere in the settings. Try using an EQ on a bass-heavy track and see that it's limited.
Try jumping back multiple times in a song at its beginning, and it will play in lower pitch.
I thought VLC was awesome while growing up, and at the time it probably was compared to Windows Media Player and such. I remember a common bit of praise was that it supported more types of video files. I haven't really run into anything mpv won't play (I even use it when an image I saved ends up as .html for some reason and then use the info screen to determine the real extension it should be so I can rename it), but also I'm guessing we've standardized more on codecs and containers these days which doesn't hurt.
If you’re on Linux on macOS, you’ll have access to the `file` command-line tool which can do it effectively. In a couple of lines of shell scripting you can even have it auto-change the extension.
Could be something as simple as:
file_path="${1}"
mime="$(file --mime-type --brief "${file_path}")"
ext="${mime#image/}"
mv "${file_path}" "${file_path%.*}.${ext}"
That does no checks (e.g. is the file an image) and may not work on something on something like a video, but it’ll do for common image types such as png, jpeg, webp, heic, gif… #!/bin/bash
# Usage: fix-extensions <media file(s)>
# Renames the files to consistent file extensions based on content
for file in "$@"; do
[ -f "$file" ] || continue
dir=$(dirname "$file")
name=$(basename "$file")
prefix="${name%.*}"
ext="${name##*.}"
magic=$(file -b "$file")
newext=""
case "$magic" in
*"Apple QuickTime movie"*) newext=mov;;
"ISO Media, Apple iTunes Video"*) newext=mp4;;
"ISO Media, MP4"*) newext=mp4;;
"ISO Media, MPEG-4 (.MP4)"*) newext=mp4;;
"Macromedia Flash data"*) newext=swf;;
"Macromedia Flash Video") newext=flv;;
"Matroska data") newext=mkv;;
"Microsoft ASF"*) newext=wmv;;
"MPEG sequence"*) newext=mpeg;;
"Ogg data, OGM video"*) newext=ogm;;
"RealMedia file") newext=rm;;
"RIFF "*" data, AVI,"*) newext=avi;;
"WebM") newext=webm;;
esac
if [ -z "$newext" ]; then
echo >&2 "$file: not renaming, unknown extension for type '$magic'"
elif [ "$ext" != "$newext" ]; then
mv -v "$file" "$dir/$prefix.$newext"
fi
done