OK, so this cannot be done at the moment using pulseaudio / LADSPA because the pulseaudio LADSPA hander takes one input port & one output port with specific names. I read that when I started playing with this stuff but I didn't realize what it meant, exactly. I'm working with this asoundrc at the moment - it still doesn't do exactly what I want, mainly because I listen to stuff that's recorded at wildly different levels, making it hard to get settings that can be heard for one song, but too loud for the next one. pcm.limit { type ladspa slave.pcm "plughw:1,0"; #slave.pcm "default"; path "/usr/lib/ladspa"; plugins [ { label fastLookaheadLimiter #Ports: #"Input gain (dB)" input, control, -20 to 20, default 0 #"Limit (dB)" input, control, -20 to 0, default 0 #"Release time (s)" input, control, 0.01 to 2, default 0.5075 #"Attenuation (dB)" output, control, 0 to 70 input { controls [ 0 -11 0.01 ] } } ] } pcm.!default { type plug slave.pcm "limit" #slave.pcm "h_limit" }