http://www.walterglenn.com/2007/08/11/more-on-vista-volume-mixer/ Small business and home computing in a (mostly) Microsoft world. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:45:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 http://www.walterglenn.com/2007/08/11/more-on-vista-volume-mixer/#comment-14737 Mall Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:05:19 +0000 http://www.walterglenn.com/2007/08/11/more-on-vista-volume-mixer/#comment-14737 That's a nice theory, but it doesn't remember relative settings for most applications either. All but a few instantiate at the same level as the speaker volume. The worst offenders are IE, Firefox, Opera, K-Meleon, Seamonkey, Safari, and Flock, but various other applications not intended for multimedia have their little beeps and error sounds that blow you away too. I've got the ringing eardrums to prove it. The new mixer is basically a painfully partially implemented concept that could have been thought out better before adding it to a non-beta version of windows. They could have at the least allowed you to set a default sound to speaker volume ratio for new application processes, if not a maximum default fixed volume for new processes. You either have to have the speakers volume down so low you can't control audio adequately from within your multimedia applications, or have your volume up high so you can control it from your multimedia applications and be prepared for ear pain when a new application is instantiated and finds some reason to make sounds...applications with startup sounds are particularly annoying because you can't turn the volume down until the process is running so you have to take your ear drum blast each time before turning the volume down or muting them. That’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t remember relative settings for most applications either. All but a few instantiate at the same level as the speaker volume. The worst offenders are IE, Firefox, Opera, K-Meleon, Seamonkey, Safari, and Flock, but various other applications not intended for multimedia have their little beeps and error sounds that blow you away too. I’ve got the ringing eardrums to prove it. The new mixer is basically a painfully partially implemented concept that could have been thought out better before adding it to a non-beta version of windows. They could have at the least allowed you to set a default sound to speaker volume ratio for new application processes, if not a maximum default fixed volume for new processes. You either have to have the speakers volume down so low you can’t control audio adequately from within your multimedia applications, or have your volume up high so you can control it from your multimedia applications and be prepared for ear pain when a new application is instantiated and finds some reason to make sounds…applications with startup sounds are particularly annoying because you can’t turn the volume down until the process is running so you have to take your ear drum blast each time before turning the volume down or muting them.

]]>