Well the normalization proposed for the Empeg player software doesn't touch the actual MP3/WAV file either. It just saves a "volume adjustment factor" and scales the volume accordingly the next time the song plays. (The first time you play, it analyzes the track to figure out how much normalization is needed.)

Not sure if they plan to let the user enable/disable normalization, but I would imagine it'd be available as an Emplode player config option at some point.