System Wide Audio (Volume) Compressor

[Pleng]

I live in an apartment, which means I can't have to volume up too high when watching TV. On the other hand, I live right on a highway which means there is insane amounts of noise from traffic.

When watching cartoons or films there's never really an issue as these seem to have the audio levels within a reasonable spectrum. However I've started watching a TV series (Breaking Bad) which regularly flips between scenes where the protagonists are whispering/mumbling/speaking under their breath to each other (for no apparent reason), and scenes with shouting, explosions and other loud noises.

It's getting a bit tiring, and distracting, having to constantly adjust the volume whilst watching.

I use XBMC on WinXP to watch my videos. XBMC doesn't have audio compression built in and I can't find a plugin for it. Does anybody know of a system wide audio compressor for Windows that I can run so I can get more consistent sound levels? Alternatively, my WinXP machine is a VMWare image and my host OS (for the time being) is Linux, so a system wide audio compressor for Linux should do the trick... though I'd rather use a Windows one if possible (as I'll be changing my host OS eventually).

 

[FAST6191]

I thought XBMC had dynamic range compression- http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Video_playback#OSD_audio_and_subtitle_settings

Failing that there may be ways you can kick it to ffdshow and use its filters but I am not sure how at this point. System wide I would probably return to ffdshow and such like as you can force all audio through it if you tell it to snatch raw audio though a search says http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=135 might do it.

 

[Pleng]

I'll take a look at the second link you provided, thanks.

Re the first link... yea there's a lot of things XBMC have in the documentation that just don't seem to be showing in the menus of my installation. Baffling.

 

[PsyBlade]

http://askubuntu.com/questions/31580/is-there-a-way-of-leveling-compressing-the-sound-system-wide

 

[Pleng]

Thanks