Yes, some media players sound louder than others. I haven't verified, but I suspect that they achieve this by purposely increasing the gain and inducing clippin

Yes, some media players sound louder than others. I haven't verified, but I suspect that they achieve this by purposely increasing the gain and inducing clipping. That sounds dumb, but weak computer speakers can't compensate for low mastering. The proper thing would be to compress the dynamic range, but that's real work compared to just inducing some clipping. Play a song in iTunes at 100% and compare to VLC @ "33%".