Is It Just Me, Or Is Audio Suddenly Louder?

I keep having to turn down my audiobooks all of a sudden, and even then they’re too loud. It’s gotten to the point where, when it’s just getting comfortable to listen to them, I’m suddenly at Volume 1 heading for Volume 0. Often, the same thing is happening with other audio stuff on the computer, etc.

Now, I know I’m not developing audio superpowers, and people’s hearing doesn’t get better as we get older. So I wonder what gives?

UPDATE: There was something weird going on with my computer. Apparently, instead of turning off one speaker signal when it turned on the headphones, it was pushing the speaker signal through my headphones in addition to my headphone signal. So it sounded twice as loud because it really was putting out twice as much sound. Weeeeeird.

Maybe the firmware in my mp3 player updated in some similar way. I’ll have to check the settings and such.