Any one heard of a way to have a Vista style sound mixer in XP? Being able to selectively adjust volume for individual programs would make things alot easier. I use a headset with my PC more than the speakers and its difficult using voice chat while anything else is running if it cant be turned down in its options. I've been googling for about an hour to no avail.
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Vista style mixer in XP?
(12 posts)
I have the Realtek HD Audio Manager on my system, which perhaps has taken over the running of the sounds. When I open the mixer from the standard Windows volume control icon, I only have 1 Device, "Speakers" and 1 Application, "Windows Sounds". Maybe if Realtek hadn't taken over, I would be able to add applications to that mixer?
@satansoldier, sorry that I sorta hijacked your thread with the Vista question. However, I did research as you suggested and may have found an answer for you. In this blog post about the Vista volume mixer, the MS employee writes:
Windows XP had a single control for all sounds, and this controlled only the hardware.
I suspect that this means XP does not even track individual application volumes, so it's unlikely that there is a 3rd party app that can control per-application volume in XP.
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@johnhill987, thanks, I will fool around with this feature some time and see how it works.
Windows Vista has a new Audio Stack that was developed with volume control of individual programs in mind.
Basically, it does this by taking the sound from all the applications, adjusting the volume if needed, combining it and sending it to the sound output of the sound card.
The Audio Stack in Windows XP is simpler, it just sends all the sounds right to the output of the sound card.
There is a cost to the way Windows Vista does it though, it uses more of the CPU to do the mixing.
Microsoft probably figured that with the usage of newer faster processors in computers that it was an acceptable cost as it would be a minimal usage difference with newer processors.
Though, of course if you want to use a digital output like SPIDF then Windows Vista will still do the Windows XP style and not let you control individual programs volume so that the audio is sent unaltered to the Digital Output.
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