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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

That brings to mind automatic gain control. It seems like there could be a market for headphones that have their own AGC to prevent a computer or music player from overriding such things. Perhaps a button to switch to AGC Normal, AGC Safe, AGC disabled? Maybe even default to AGC Safe, so one could crank up a game to where they can easily hear footsteps but then a 50 BMG next to the head would be the same volume. AGC Disabled to bring back the dynamic range of music that has a known loudness. Or perhaps it's a silly idea.

[Edit] Per liminalsunset I should be referring to this as Dynamic Range Compression or DRC

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This isn't a bad idea at all! Typically, this technique is actually known as dynamic range compression (DRC), which is a form of AGC and a technique for reducing the difference between quiet and loud sounds [by reducing the volume of sudden loud sounds]. Many computer monitors already do a version of this for vision (Black Equalizer, etc). Many audio drivers and audio accessibility features include some form of this, including iOS/(macOS?)[1] and plugins are available for other platforms. On iOS there is also a feature specifically that automatically turns down only audio that exceeds a user chosen safe decibel limit. AirPods are capable of measuring their dB output live, which can be monitored in Apple Health. [2]

[1]https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT211218

[2] https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/ipad/ipade8c21895/ipad...

This technique is called Dynamic Range Compression and has been used (abused?) by the music industry for the last century. You're right though, weird that I don't tend to think of it on the device side. One issue I've run into is that it's surprisingly hard to hijack your computers outgoing audio stream for processing. OS level audio routings honestly sucks.

The better place to implement this (in my opinion) is in the games themselves. I've seen a few games (wish I remembered which) recently that offered a few choices in their audio settings so that you can request reduced range for more consistency in noisy listening conditions or full dynamics for people with nicer setups.

On Windows, Equalizer APO can be used for this — it has the capability to apply any VST across the computer's outgoing audio stream, including compressors.

How do various anti-cheat technologies work with that? One could imagine that developers would see that as tampering with the "native experience", if some people use limiters/compressors/filters and similar.

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