Volume Control is a nice, small and free gadget you can have on your desktop to see the current volume level, change it, even open easily the Windows Sound Mixer (by double clicking the gadget).
Volume Control includes many skins you can change; the default one is black. It will let you monitor sound level in LEDS (even red ones at distortion), and use profiles for different levels of speakers, subwoofer, etc.
Run the .gadget file to start using Volume Control immediately, or save it to install the gadget later