...for the sake of the empeg, wouldn't make more since to simply do it on the player side? Maybe even as a plugin that pre-analyzes the next song, and lowers or raises the volume accordingly...

Yeah, it's in the "Wish List" thread. I put it there. But like I said, it's not trivial to implement something like that. It would take a lot of time for a programmer to implement it properly. The Empeg programmers have a lot on their plate as it is right now.

Even if it could be implemented, It would require a significant amount of CPU time, and it would also double the amount of disk access the player performs.

Wait a minute... would it?

If the player is already precaching the next song anyway (I know it does), then maybe it wouldn't increase disk usage. Well, at least for short songs. For symphonies and one-track rock operas, it would require quite a bit of extra disk access. But for pop songs, you could probably decode and analyze most (all?) of the next track without hitting the disk again. Hmm...