I guess one main part of my question is what is it trying to normalize to? It seems to actually not normalize until after the first bit of a file also, but that could just be the particular files I have been testing with. It obviously can't be trying to normalize to an average of the file because it hasn't seen the whole file. I couldn't really find anything out there about it, and the audio portion of the wiki documentation has yet to be written. With an AC3 file it took a max. amplification of above 300% before it would ever not be at max amplification during playback, but with an mp3 file it would never get below 92%. Is it just not good at bringing the level down? Do I need to encode everything to a low level if I want all of my files to be the same approximte level? A second question also: When I open the Audio configuraion from the start menu while a file is playing it does not give the live information on the volume window, like it does when double clicking on the system tray icon. Is there a way to get the "live" part w/o the system tray icon.
Any decent player will give you access to filters. You can go into the properties there without the need for the tray icon. The volume normalizing code comes from mplayer with some ideas from volnorm plugin for xmms. At least according to the notice in the source code.
