Listen to podcasts much? Unless you’re very lucky and only listen to professionally done podcasts, you probably have to jump on your volume settings from podcast to podcast, and when you listen to the most poorly produced Skype conversations you probably have to choose between hearing some hosts shouting into your ears or not being able to discern anything their guests say.

Enter Volume Logic, a real-time dynamic range compressor plugin for iTunes that will boost the fainter voices (and the noise from their $2 microphones) and tone down the louder THX-like intros, giving you a nice, homogenous conversation that won’t unexpectedly jump at you. (You could also use it on music, but then that would be criminal.) It’s sixteen euros, comes with a 30-day demo, and, unless it crashes my computer or someone contributes a freeware alternative, I’m going to have to buy it.

It doesn’t change the files themselves, so it won’t do anything if you’re listening to podcasts on your iPod, though.

Corollary: if you’re publishing a podcast and you’re not compressing dynamic range in some way (either by checking the compression checkbox in GarageBand, or running your finished sound file in The Levelator, which is free — how fucking hard can that be?) then, no matter who you are and how interesting your podcast is, you’re goddamn moronic asshole.