In reply to:

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It's too bad that we don't have a piece of real-time software running right on the empeg player itself which already handles this, including the ability to adjust for the quiet parts of an otherwise loud song.

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In seriousness, normalisation for CDs mastered way below the usual norm is best done as a one-off operation before encoding. I've tried normalize->encode->decode and it is kinder to the music than encode->decode->normalize (because it brings more of the sound above the absolute threshold of hearing in the lossy encode step). Add to which VolAdj adjusts relative levels within a track which is not necessarily what you want.

I use VolAdj in the car, but not at home. I don't use it to compensate for recording level differences - more to compensate for listening in a noisy environment.

In short, two different tools for two different porpoises.