volume
So when I’m playing an MP3, I’d sure love to be able to decrease the volume of the other sounds on my computer. Its obnoxious to be listening to a song and have trillian bust in with a loud dee-doo! But they both appear to use the same control on the volume control for windows. I keep thinking that I must be missing something, but I can’t seem to see any options that would help me. Anybody else notice this and have good solutions for me?
Comments
I’ve often wondered the same thing! If you find a solution, I’d love it if you’d pass it along.
Posted by: Dyanna | May 22, 2003 12:55 PM
The only thing I do is turn off the sounds in Trillian and Eudora. But of course, if you like those sounds, that doesn’t help. Sigh.
Posted by: Zuly | May 22, 2003 01:07 PM
You should be able to either double-click on the sounds icon in your system tray or open the 'Sounds & Audio Devices' control panel in XP (in Windows 98, it’s called 'Sounds' and in Windows 2000, it’s called 'Sounds & Multimedia'). Most of the Windows system sounds are .wav files, so you can try muting the volume in the Wav section of the volume control window.
If this does not help, you can also look at the list of Windows Sound events in the control panels referenced above. For each event that has a little speaker icon next to it, you can select it, choose 'None' from the list of sounds, and click 'Apply'. You could do this to all of the sounds listed here and save this as a scheme (it’s very straightforward, and is on the same panel). Then, when you wished to "turn off" all of the system sounds, you could select this scheme and apply it. Everything would then not have a sound associated with it! Hope all of this helps (and was not too mind-numbinly tedious!).
Posted by: Jeff | May 22, 2003 02:59 PM
You should be able to either double-click on the Sounds icon (usually a little speaker) in your system tray or open the 'Sounds & Audio Devices' control panel in XP (in Windows 98, it’s called 'Sounds' and in Windows 2000, it’s called 'Sounds & Multimedia'). Most of the Windows system sounds are .wav files, so you can try muting the volume in the Wav section of the volume control window. As you can see in this volume control window, the CD Audio has it’s own volume associated with it, which is independent of the Wav output.
If this does not help, you can also look at the list of Windows Sound Events in the control panels referenced above. For each event that has a little speaker icon next to it, you can select it, choose 'None' from the list of sounds, and click 'Apply'. You could do this to all of the sounds listed here and save this as a scheme (it’s very straightforward, and is on the same panel). Then, when you wished to "turn off" all of the system sounds, you could select this scheme and apply it. Everything would then not have a sound associated with it! Hope all of this helps (and was not too mind-numbingly tedious!).
Posted by: Jeff | May 22, 2003 03:01 PM
You should be able to either double-click on the Sounds icon (usually a little speaker) in your system tray or open the 'Sounds & Audio Devices' control panel in XP (in Windows 98, it’s called 'Sounds' and in Windows 2000, it’s called 'Sounds & Multimedia'). Most of the Windows system sounds are .wav files, so you can try muting the volume in the Wav section of the volume control window. As you can see in this volume control window, the CD Audio has it’s own volume associated with it, which is independent of the Wav output.
If this does not help, you can also look at the list of Windows Sound Events in the control panels referenced above. For each event that has a little speaker icon next to it, you can select it, choose 'None' from the list of sounds, and click 'Apply'. You could do this to all of the sounds listed here and save this as a scheme (it’s very straightforward, and is on the same panel). Then, when you wished to "turn off" all of the system sounds, you could select this scheme and apply it. Everything would then not have a sound associated with it! Hope all of this helps (and was not too mind-numbingly tedious!).
Posted by: Jeff | May 22, 2003 03:02 PM
Oh good God. Look what I’ve done. I’m so sorry for the mess I left behind! My browser kept timing out trying to post the previous comment, and I ended up posting it not once, not twice, but thrice! I’m very sorry again!
Posted by: Jeff | May 22, 2003 03:05 PM
Those words Kristine wrote, that’s exactly what I’m thinking too: there must be some useful tool for dimming system sounds (e.g. when playing MP3). In response to Jeff’s remarks: I’d say that the WAV-sound control also dims MP3 playback? In any case I wouldn’t want to edit my sound-scheme everytime I play MP3...
Posted by: Pepe116 | January 30, 2004 07:50 AM
Anyway, I seem to have found a workable solution for me, which is; I use WinAmp (2.7) to play MP3. The WinAmp website yields plug-ins that 'normalize' sound output (these plugins can 'level-off' peak sounds), and it appears that they also do that for Windows (XP) system sounds. So my sufggestion’d be: use WinAmp + a plug-in (e.g. 'Enhacer').
Posted by: Pepe116 | January 30, 2004 11:41 AM
... mmm, maybe not a real solution after all...
Posted by: Pepe116 | January 31, 2004 01:15 PM
this will be available (I hope) in longhorn
it allows the volume of each program to be controlled
http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/flatvolumecontrol/index.html
for a demo
Posted by: Steve | May 6, 2004 03:19 PM