Shut up, you!
June 3, 2011 9:03 AM Subscribe
Make my computer shut up for everything except Pandora.
I work in a small salon, and instead of using regular radio, we have our back computer hooked up to our stereo system, and play Pandora. The problem is, every so often we'll use it to do other things, and inevitably someone in the back wil be playing sounds and can't hear it coming over the speakers in the front of the salon. It's pretty annoying. Is there any way I can make Pandora be the only thing that plays sound? I've searched for teb-specific muting, but everyone seems to just go "thats a great idea!" and then nothing comes of it. Is there window-specific muting? Is there a plugin I'm missing? I realize this is going to be hard, because Pandora plays in a browser, and I want all other browser sounds[and usual computer sounds] off, so how do I make it distinguish between Pandora and any other thing in a browser?
Help, please.
I work in a small salon, and instead of using regular radio, we have our back computer hooked up to our stereo system, and play Pandora. The problem is, every so often we'll use it to do other things, and inevitably someone in the back wil be playing sounds and can't hear it coming over the speakers in the front of the salon. It's pretty annoying. Is there any way I can make Pandora be the only thing that plays sound? I've searched for teb-specific muting, but everyone seems to just go "thats a great idea!" and then nothing comes of it. Is there window-specific muting? Is there a plugin I'm missing? I realize this is going to be hard, because Pandora plays in a browser, and I want all other browser sounds[and usual computer sounds] off, so how do I make it distinguish between Pandora and any other thing in a browser?
Help, please.
Ingredients:
Apple Airport Express
Powered Desktop Computer Speakers
AirFoil
PandoraOne Player
Recipe:
Join the Airport Express to your wireless or wired network.
Enable Airplay on it.
Install Airfoil.
Configure Airfoil to play to the Speakers with PandoraOne as the source.
Enjoy the only sound coming out of those remote speakers being the Pandora Stream. Use computer as you would like without worry.
posted by iamabot at 9:06 AM on June 3, 2011 [2 favorites]
Apple Airport Express
Powered Desktop Computer Speakers
AirFoil
PandoraOne Player
Recipe:
Join the Airport Express to your wireless or wired network.
Enable Airplay on it.
Install Airfoil.
Configure Airfoil to play to the Speakers with PandoraOne as the source.
Enjoy the only sound coming out of those remote speakers being the Pandora Stream. Use computer as you would like without worry.
posted by iamabot at 9:06 AM on June 3, 2011 [2 favorites]
(Hurm, note that above recipe works with a Mac...for everything, dunno, shouldn't have assumed).
posted by iamabot at 9:07 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by iamabot at 9:07 AM on June 3, 2011
Best answer: I think you would need two different browsers to make this work, because all sound from one browser is going to be controlled monolithically. There are a few good browsers out there, so that part should not be too hard - just make sure the people doing things other than pandora don't use the browser that pandora is in.
Also, you can get a cheap USB sound card (should be able to find one under $20), and then have everything but pandora use that one.
posted by idiopath at 9:12 AM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]
Also, you can get a cheap USB sound card (should be able to find one under $20), and then have everything but pandora use that one.
posted by idiopath at 9:12 AM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: If you have a Windows computer with an OS later than XP, the sound mixer lets you adjust sound for individual process that are running. You just click on the sound icon in your tray and open the full mixer (rather than the single master volume bar) and mute everything except Pandora.
posted by Kimberly at 9:31 AM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Kimberly at 9:31 AM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks, guys. I'm going to combine idiopath's and kimberly's suggestions. You guys rock.
posted by shesaysgo at 9:40 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by shesaysgo at 9:40 AM on June 3, 2011
I have found Mozilla prism to be very useful in situations like this.
posted by phil at 5:12 PM on June 3, 2011
posted by phil at 5:12 PM on June 3, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:05 AM on June 3, 2011