Loudness management

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hello,

I'm wondering how everyone handles loudness management. Everyone knows the problem - watching movies with a big dynamic range without the proper listening environment and speaker system means that you're always fiddling with the volume. Either explosions are too loud or dialogue is too quiet. For simplicity's sake, let's focus on vanilla Dolby Digital (AC3).

Hardware and software based dynamic range compression, "night mode" on my receiver, and all the other solutions I've tried never seem to work right. They either seem totally ineffective, or cause audible distortion. I've tried measuring the proper values to insert as metadata into the AC3 stream, but it doesn't seem to make a difference one way or the other.

In broadcast we would insert a loudness control device into the air chain, but it's a bit different with software on the PC.

How do you guys do it?

Thanks,
Derek