Volume Control

The Volume Control accessory is basically a no-brainer. It provides a pop-up volume control sporting balance, mute, and other controls for your audio subsystem. Whether you're playing radio stations from the Web, CDs from your CD drive, listening to TV if you have a TV tuner card, doing online conferencing with NetMeeting, or recording sound files, you need access to these controls from time to time. Of course, if you don't have a working sound card installed, this accessory isn't available, or at least it won't do anything. A little known fact for many people is that this accessory has two sets of controlsone for recording and one for playback.

1.	To open the volume controls, choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, Entertainment, Volume Control. A shortcut is to double-click the little speaker icon in the system tray on the Windows XP taskbar. NOTE If the speaker icon isn't visible, open the Sounds and Audio Devices icon in Control Panel and click the box labeled Place Volume Icon in the Taskbar. Click Apply. Your sound system's capabilities and possible changes that past users have made to the application's settings determine the format of the volume controls you see. On one of my computers the controls look like what you see in Figure 5.10. Figure 5.10. The basic volume controls for setting playback volume. Another set is available for record levels.
2.	You can alter any volume control's setting by dragging the volume up or down. Change the balance between right and left channels by dragging the Balance sliders left or right. Mute any source input by checking the Mute box in its column.
3.	Controls for some input sources are probably not showing. Check out the Options, Properties command. It offers options for turning on various volume controls and possibly special features. Figure 5.11 shows an example. Because audio controls operate differently for different sound cards, check out any Help files that might be available from your audio controls. Figure 5.11. The Properties dialog box for typical volume controls.

If you are doing any sound recording, be sure to see the recording controls, too. Open the Properties dialog box, and choose Recording.

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Sometimes you want to see the playback and the recording controls at one time. To do so, run the Volume Control application twice. Set one for playback and the other one to record. Then adjust them onscreen so that you can see each side-by-side.

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Some sliders in one module are linked to sliders in other modules. Adjusting the Volume setting on one affects Volume settings on the other mixers. For example, adjusting the playback volume in Media Player or your audio CD player or MP3 player will typically alter the "Wave" or the master Volume control slider position on the system Volume Controls.

To quickly adjust or mute the sound output from your system, or to adjust the master volume level (useful when the phone rings), click the little speaker icon in the system tray, near the clock, as shown in Figure 5.12. If the speaker icon isn't showing, then you have to turn it on. To turn it on, click Start, Control Panel, Sounds Speech and Audio Devices; click Sounds and Audio Devices, then turn on Place Volume Icon in the Taskbar Notification Area and click OK on the dialog box.

Figure 5.12. Quickly setting the master output volume.

If your system suddenly doesn't have any sound at all, see "No Sound" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this chapter.

If you are using a sound card with support for more than two speakers, open the Sounds and Audio Devices icon in Control Panel and click the Advanced button in the Speaker Settings section of the Volume tab to select the speaker or headset type you're using to ensure correct operation of your speakers.