I just watched a movie and had to set the volume level quite high to get audio. I forgot to set the volume to the lower level it was at and started a trance music track and that literally made my ears hurt a lot because I'm wearing closed headphones!
Is there a way to limit the output volume level (dB) at some sensible level regardless of the volume applications output?
UPDATE: this might not be possible (see answers below and on David's link). In any case no one here knows how to do it. But if you get it working, please let me know!
Best Answer
For movies with low volume I always prefer to over-amplify from mplayer (check --soft-vol option, or something similar) than to rise the system-wide sound volume. For music and other stuff you usually don't need to change the volume.