Topic awaiting preservation: Consistent Windows Volume

I have become increasingly annoyed with the vast differences in volume levels between various media. I can adjust my default Windows sounds to a comfortable level, but when I surf through random videos on the Internet, some of them are very, very low. I'm forced to turn up my volume to watch them, so then when e-mail comes in, I get the crap scared out of me by an incredibly loud Jetsons doorbell.

Has anyone come across a clever little program that will automatically maintain a consistent volume output? You know, like some TVs can do -- a loud commercial comes on and it automatically limits the volume? I've been searching, but can't come up with anything. (I think I found one program, but I wasn't going to pay the required $99.)

Look for anything that is a sound normalizer. I know a lot of plugins for winamp and the like, but I bet there should bea general purpose program for that floating around.

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Sexy Demoness cel

I don't know about programs which could do so, but i do know about gear which could o the trick. Get yourself an (audio) compressor. Each sound guy knows how to use this to maximize the output level. Just route your audio output through this and with the correct setting you could even boost the low volume music.
Here are some articles that could help you understand those devices:
http://www.barryrudolph.com/mix/comp.html
http://www.tweakheadz.com/compressors.htm
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/apr97/compressors.html

Ofcourse an hardware normalizer could do the trick too.
However there does not seem to be an easy software solution, there are a lot of audio normalizers /compressors to be found but they either work as an winamp plugin, an audio-editor plugin or you have to convert your existing mp3 files through such a program. And ofcourse with the mp3 variant you need another prog to normailze the wav files.
But what you actualy need is an program which comes in between the audio-output from any audio player program and the input from your sound card. When using linux this might be achieved with some scripting knowedge and piping the audio output through an temp file which is processed throurg an compresor/normalizer program.
In windows this probably means an virtual audio-device doing the normalizing and which has to be selected as audio output from the playing software. Then the virtual audio-device should give it's signal to the soundcard installed.
I expect both methods would use an seriuos amount of system resources.
An fast search on google does not list any program who could do such a thing that's why i though about an hardware solution. though i am aware that you probably don't want some expansive extra gear.

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