Dynamic range compression plug-in/application for system-wide windows audio?

Question

When listening to youtube it is evident that audio engineering is not most video poster's strong point. Levels of volume and dynamic range vary wildly from one video to the next.

I would like to be able to chain a software-based dynamic range compressor into my system audio so that I can normalize and maximize the volume and dynamic range levels of all audio on my windows computer.

I know that windows media 9 has "quiet mode" which will dynamically compress audio levels, but this is for the media player only. I need a dynamic range compressor for system-wide audio, not just audio from my media player.

I have searched for, but cannot find an application that can accomplish this. It seems like a relatively simple, even trivial application to implement - software-based, dynamic range compression is a very mature technology. I cannot see why it would not be implemented for all audio on a system, rather than in an application-specific manner.

Answer 1

Your best bet is to buy a sound card that comes with software that can enable this option.

I had an Creative Soundblaster Audigy with this feature. All non-MIDI sound played through the sound card was normalized in volume.