Volume.

[RyanDOT]

Basically before whenever I used to change the volume to full, it was really loud. But now when I do the same thing it goes like a medium volume, and I like my music loud and it's annoying.

I listen through the headphones btw.

[The Professor]

How are you changing the volume? Through your media player/system volume/inline volume controls etc? Make sure all of them are turned up as you want it, sometimes the system volume has a habit of changing itself for no obvious reason

[Mentor]

xp doesnt do a good job of keeping track of volumes. One tip that often works is simply play a flash movie (youtube) and up that volume, then play somthing with a media player and max that volume to.
For some reason the application volumes effect the system volume, so you can be looseing alot of your sound capasity becuse you have a low volume set on a media player, which cant be altered by the main volume.

Equally in xp, i belive if you open the volume manager (mixer?) the toolbar that lets you display differnt voume thingys often hides a something global volume in addition to your normal volume (havent used xp in few years so probs some bad info mixed in lol)