Windows 7: Is There a Quick Toggle for 'Loudness Equalization'?

I use my PC for mostly games, but also watching movies and series (I don't see the point in buying a TV and DVD player when I'll only ever use it for DVDs), as a result I like having the 'Loudness Equalization' feature enabled for watching media, and disabled for playing games and listening to music...



Is there a quick way to toggle this on and off? It's a bit irritaing having to right-click the volume control, select properties, etc etc. Would've made more sense to have a "Audio Enhancements" sub-menu when right-clicking the audio icon in the system tray, but apparently MS didn't think of that.

Does anybody have an idea of where this setting is stored? Perhaps in the registry or a settings file somewhere? Any more details would help quite a bit, I can't seem to find much technical information on this feature with a Google search.

Yep, that's exactly how I use it, on for DVD/media, off for everything else.

There probably is a registry setting... you can check this topic to get an idea of a possible location.

Realtek Equalizer Settings

Ap

Thanks, I do remember seeing that thread a while back.. I know my XFX board makes use of a Realtek audio chipset (Realtek ALC888 to be precise), but are the registry entries mentioned there not only for the Realtek controls? I'm using the standard Windows drivers, I don't even have the Realtek audio control panel installed...

I'll check tonight when I get home (Win XP at work, Win 7 at home) and see, but I somehow doubt that's quite what I'm looking for..

I was thinking along the lines of finding the registry value that changed from 0 (off) to 1 (on) when enabling/disabling loudness eq, then you could export the registry values with each setting and use them as a toggle.

Ap

Oh, I see what you mean. I did try to do that last night, but I must admit, trying to do anything intelligent on a computer at 3am generally ends in failure with me... I'll try again tonight and see what I can find.

Ok... I found it, first try too, it's not going to be exactly the same on your system but should be very close.

The basics should be found here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/MMDEVICES/AUDIO/RENDER

One of the underlying keys will have properties for your output device, in my case, Speakers! Changes are not made here but instead with the associated FXProperties.

Speakers:



FXProperties and Loudness Equalization binary value. 1=enabled.... etc.


Ap

Well that was good timing; I was just coming back to say I'd found where the setting is stored on my PC. I exported the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\MMDevices\Audio\Render] key with Loudness Equalization turned on and off, then compared the two files in Notepad++ to find what changed...

It'll be fun trying to get this working though... I can't play with it right now unfortunately since I'm at work, but I did play around with it a little bit earlier this morning. If I import either the 'enabled' or 'disabled' registry entry, the setting doesn't take effect until I log off and back on agin. I can only think that the properties window reloads something in the sound device drivers upon clicking 'OK'.

So, bottom line is this: I know where it is, I know how to change it, but it's not as easy as I originally thought it would be. I'll try find a way around it and post back when I find a way to work around it... It'll be interesting trying to find a single solution that will work on any Win 7 computer...