MPC/volume issues

[vasta]

Using MPC-HC v1.3.1590.0 (tried a non HC version and an older HC version and have the same issues)

Can't figure this out, I bought a totally new pair of headphones about 2 months ago because the same thing happened to me...This time rather then buying a new headset again I opened audio and video files in VLC and amazingly the volume is so loud that I have to turn it down to 35% (headset volume stays at 30%) Same with WMP, everything is nice and loud. Why the hell is the volume in MPC so horribly low?

It is even worse when I turn off Normalize in MPC, Turning boost all the way up doesn't really help at all either it just sort of distorts the audio
As far as I know all the settings in MPC are defaulted so I have no idea what to change or anything

Edit, Only reason I need MPC is because VLC does not play Fraps video (it plays it but not smoothly at all)

[redwudz]

Do you have ffdshow installed? MPC-HC may be using settings from that. I see quite a bit of variance in output levels between several player programs I use. You can select ffdshow audio decoders/processors in the MPC-HC external filters menu. No idea if that will help, but maybe worth a try.