Really? I've had very varied results ripping from CD, and find that many don't appear to be normalised at all.

When ripping the bulk of my album collection, I used a program which gave me a report of the peak level of each song. All but a couple of them them were at 97 percent or above.

It is possible that your collection is more eclectic than mine. I pretty much only have mainstream albums in my collection.

I am fundementally against dynamic volume adjustment.

I understand the fundamental arguments against dynamic compression, and they are valid. However, normalization still will not make two differently-produced albums appear to sound at similar volumes, and is therefore useless to me.

In practice, Richard's voladj works quite well. When I need audiophile quality at proper volume levels, I can turn it off.