Is there any way to create a shortcut that will open the default (or even a specific) audio device properties with the 'advanced' tab already selected?
edit - going off of @heavyd's answer, I made a batch file with the following contents:
start "Sound" "C:\Windows\system32\rundll32.exe" shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL mmsys.cpl,,playback
then pinned it to my start menu - which at the very least gets me straight to the playback device properties.