XP sound/volume hack?

May 25, 2005 11:30 PM

I'm looking for a program that will be the "master" volume control for all programs on my computer (XP Pro, SP2). Something where I can, say, mute all the programs except iTunes. Or shut up AIM with one click but still be able to watch a Quicktime video.

I DJ at a college radion station, and I usually plug my laptop into the soundboard and play songs off of it using iTunes or QCD. However, I also keep a couple other programs running (AIM, Outlook Express, Firefox, etc). I've done my best to shut the non-music programs up, but once in a while I'll click on a website and there will be some automatic flash that makes noise and that gets transmitted over the airwaves! (We have no delay).

Any ideas?

posted by radioamy to Technology (3 answers total)

Buy a 2nd PCMCIA sound card, use it for audio out for your DJ program. Leave all other sounds routed to your onboard sound.
posted by Jairus at 11:45 PM on May 25, 2005

I don't know about software solutions, but the Echo Audio Indigo cardbus soundcard for laptops can do exactly what you want. It gives you separate "virtual" sound devices that you can send applications to, and they're all mixed together for the final output from the soundcard. You can mute/fade/solo the individual virtual devices using the Indigo's software control panel. So what you could do is set the Windows default sound device to the virtual device #1, and set iTunes/QCD to go to virtual device #2, and then mute device #1.

Actually, I just did a little Googling and it looks like you could do the same thing with this http://spider.nrcde.ru/music/software/eng/vac.html and a little routing trickery. I haven't tried it myself, but you should be able to apply the same principle using that software. Good luck!
posted by tumult at 11:45 PM on May 25, 2005

In case anyone stumbles upon this thread looking for a similar solution, but for a Mac: Rogue Amoeba's Detour will do the trick for OS X peeps.
posted by bcwinters at 9:14 AM on May 26, 2005