The Problem
I think it can best by described by this post I found:
The Windows master volume goes from 0 to 100, but for me it’s:
0 = muted
2 = suitable for use early in the morning or late at night
4 = daytime
6 = PARTY!
8 = the police will be coming to visit
10 = the army will be coming to visit
12 = the army will be afraid to come and visit
14 or more = I have no idea what would happen, I’m not crazy
A lot of online solutions talk about updating sound drivers and using their settings, but I've noticed this problem across multiple computers (I'm using Windows 10) using many different apps and with both headphones and speakers, so it seems to be a problem at the operating system level.
The Solution
I'd like to make the volume ranges for my computers map to something more reasonable to listen to so that I can have more fine-grained control over the volume. There does seem to be some third party software that people recommend, but it doesn't seem to address the maximum volume issue specifically.
Being able to adjust my volume level in increments of 1 instead of 2 could help and there are some ways to do that (which all seem hacky to me), but it wouldn't solve the problem of Windows sometimes defaulting to 100 when connecting to an audio device and blasting out my ears.
My home computer has a sound card driver with an EQ, so I could create a custom profile that sets all frequencies to be much quieter. This won't work for my work computer and also seems like a hacky and gross way to solve this.
What is the best way to make the 100
volume setting on Windows 10 much quieter?