Many years ago, the FCC ruled that the sound for commercials for broadcast TV could not be any louder than the program that it was interrupting. They used power as opposed to peak volume as the criteria for determining compliance. The advertisers got clever and decided they could boost the power in the higher sound frequencies while reducing the power in the low frequencies during the commercials thus keeping the total transmitted power during commercials the same as during the program. The net result was that the commercials sounded louder when they broke from regular programming. It was a clever way to get around the FCC ruling. However, the FCC has no control over the volume of streaming video since the internet does not use the airways for distribution. That is my understanding.

This is something that has been going on for years. On U-Tube, on the Amazon Prime, and frankly other locations. I tried to hear a movie's audio and it comes out as a wispier, or low volume, yet when there is a commercial (U-Tube) the audio blares. I know that for some reason the providers are doing this with purpose, that is apparent.

My question is, is there anything that can be done on a standard computer like a Dell computer to increase the volume beyond the volume knob on the speaker? I have actually doped out of a film because the audio is so low I simply cannot follow the dialogue, and this is on a paid site.