Found a workaround while playing with latest VLC on Windows today.
The solution is actually easy.
Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced Preferences
Interface -> Main Interface -> QT
Max Volume Displayed: 200
This will change the range the audio can max out at. Therefore allowing it to go past 125 and save the volume.
Now change the Preferences back to simple.
Always reset audio start level to can now slide all the way up to 200.
If you leave it unchecked, it will simply save it at whatever audio level you set it to manually.
By the way, the reason we changed the QT interface is that it's the default interface used by Windows per VLC's wiki page on QT
https://wiki.videolan.org/Qt_Interface/