IN any case, for all of you who'd like to write mp3 to a WAV file, have the file all by itself in the playlist of Winamp, decode it once to get the perfect noclipping signal, then decode it again with that attenuation setting. Only having one file in the playlist will ensure that that attenuation setting is kept, since MAD cannot write that attenuation setting to a file or registry yet(?).
That's the way I do it with modules too. One decoding cycle for finding the attenuation setting, another to use that perfect setting.
Tony