Toggle Windows Loudness Equalization instantly — from a system tray icon, a pinned taskbar button, or the command line — instead of digging through the Sound control panel every time.
Loudness Equalization (a.k.a. volume leveling / loudness equalizer) is the built-in Windows audio enhancement that evens out volume differences: quiet dialogue gets louder, loud peaks get tamed. It's great for movies at night, quiet speech, or weak USB speakers — but Windows buries the checkbox in Sound Control Panel → device Properties → Enhancements, and it won't stay put on some devices. loudeq turns it into one click.
- Works on Windows 10 and 11, on any device running Windows' own audio effects — USB headsets and speakers, Bluetooth, HDMI, and onboard audio with no vendor app installed. Exactly the devices the Realtek Audio Console and friends ignore
- Devices managed by a manufacturer's audio app (Realtek Audio Console, Nahimic, Waves, Dolby) run that vendor's effects instead of Windows', so their settings live in that app — loudeq greys those out and tells you, rather than pretending to change something
- Applies live to playing audio — no audio-service restart, no admin prompt
- Tiny (~400 KB), no runtime required, fully offline (no network, no data collection), open source
- Get it on the Microsoft Store for a signed one-click install, or build from source below
Just looking for the setting? See Where did Loudness Equalization go in Windows 11 (and how to get it back) — why the Enhancements tab disappeared, how to check whether your device supports it, and every way to switch it back on (including by hand, without this tool).
loudeq # toggle Loudness EQ on the default playback device
loudeq on # enable
loudeq off # disable
loudeq status # show current state
loudeq list # list active playback devices (+ state)
loudeq bass on|off|status # toggle Bass Boost
loudeq bass freq 200 # Bass Boost cutoff frequency (50-600 Hz)
loudeq bass level 12 # Bass Boost level (3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24 dB)
loudeq surround on|off # toggle Virtual Surround / Headphone Virtualization
loudeq surround preset jazz # headphone room preset: studio, jazz or hall
loudeq setup # only needed if the fallback path asks for UAC (see below)
Options:
-d, --device <NAME> target a device by name substring instead of the default
--no-restart fallback path only: write the setting but don't restart
the audio service
On devices using the generic Microsoft audio driver (most USB speakers/headsets and any device without a vendor driver), the old Enhancements-tab Bass Boost and Virtual Surround effects are standard Windows audio effects with the same portable settings on every such device — so loudeq toggles them live too, exactly like Loudness Equalization, no admin and no vendor app. They don't apply on devices with a vendor driver (Realtek, etc.), where those effects are vendor-specific. The tray app's right-click menu has toggles for both as well.
On headphones, Windows calls the same virtualization effect "Headphone Virtualization" — it's
one setting whose value selects the mode, so loudeq surround drives both, and the CLI and tray
label it the way the Enhancements tab would for the device you're on. Headphones also get a room
preset (Studio / Jazz Club / Concert Hall) via loudeq surround preset.
Changes are applied live through the audio policy service — same as clicking Apply in the Sound control panel: no admin rights, no UAC, no audio interruption.
If that path ever fails (loudeq tells you when it does), it falls back to writing the registry directly and restarting the Windows Audio service, which needs administrator rights — it requests UAC elevation by itself. For a UAC-free fallback too, run loudeq setup once: it grants interactive users permission to start/stop the Windows Audio service. loudeq setup --remove restores the original permissions (a backup of the original security descriptor is kept under HKCU\Software\loudeq).
The Loudness Equalization checkbox is the endpoint FX property {fc52a749-4be9-4510-896e-966ba6525980},3 (a VT_BOOL PROPVARIANT). It lives in two places under
HKLM\...\MMDevices\Audio\Render\{endpoint-guid}\FxProperties:
- the legacy flat value directly in
FxProperties, and - on Windows 11, a per-effect-instance user store at
FxProperties\{instance-guid}\User— this is the one the effects engine and the Enhancements dialog actually honor. Writing only the flat value changes nothing audible.
loudeq writes both: the flat value through IPolicyConfig::SetPropertyValue (the undocumented-but-stable audio policy interface, unchanged since Windows 7), and each instance user store through the documented Windows 11 IAudioSystemEffectsPropertyStore API. The engine applies the change live — mid-stream, no elevation, no service restart (the effect's own gain then ramps over a few seconds, by design).
If the live path fails, loudeq falls back to writing the registry directly and restarting the Windows Audio service.
loudeq meter samples the endpoint's peak output level for 5 seconds — useful to verify the effect objectively: play quiet/dynamic audio and compare readings with the effect off vs. on.
The default playback device is resolved with the MMDevice COM API (IMMDeviceEnumerator::GetDefaultAudioEndpoint); device enumeration and state reads are plain registry access.
cargo build --release
The exe lands in target\release\loudeq.exe. Copy it anywhere and/or make a shortcut.
Smart App Control: if SAC is enabled, Windows blocks locally-built unsigned executables (including Cargo build scripts), so both building and running this tool require SAC to be off.
loudeq-tray.exe (also started by loudeq tray) puts an icon in the notification area that always shows the current state of the default playback device:
- green dot = Loudness EQ ON, gray ring = OFF
- left-click the icon = toggle (with a toast notification)
- right-click = menu: status, Toggle, Bass Boost, Virtual Surround, Start with Windows, Exit
- launching the exe again while it's running relays a toggle to the running instance — so a shortcut pinned to the taskbar acts as a toggle button: every click flips the setting and the tray icon updates.
To pin it: find LoudEQ in the Start Menu, right-click → Pin to taskbar. Drag the tray icon out of the overflow flyout onto the taskbar clock area to keep it always visible. Enable Start with Windows from the right-click menu to have it from logon.