[ctviggen]

I have my entire music collection ripped to FLAC and use Squeeze Play to play the music via the internal sound card of a PC.  The sound card output goes to a tube-based headphone amp.  I listen at times to random play or to album play.

The problems:  (1) classical music is basically not possible to listen to, as if I turn the volume up enough to hear the quiet passages, it's blasting my eardrums when the loud passages come on; (2) the same occurs for random play.  For (2), for instance, I just listened to Janaki Trio (classical, strings), then went immediately to Arturo Sandoval (with very loud horns. Next up is Linkin Park, then Sinatra.  If I turn it up loud enough to hear the Trio, I'm blasted out by Sandoval.

Are there any cures for this other than to keep turning up and down the amplifier knob?

[roscoeiii]

Not sure that it will solve your first problem, but for the second some music players (like iTunes) will adjust the levels of your music so that there aren't such drastic differences in volume levels from track to track. Not sure how this might affect the overall audio quality of the track, nor whether this needs to be done when importing or if it can be applied to already imported music...

[tjohnusa]

I don't think you can auto level tracks once ripped...must be done when they are ripped. What program are you playing them with and what kind of sound card is it? Have you considered getting a DAC?

[Tyson]

If you hate dynamics, listen to the radio.