Chapter 19: Working with Sound

Configuring Windows to Work with Sound

Many applications, particularly games, have built-in sound. Those programs automatically take advantage of your system's sound card, speakers, and microphone, once Windows is configured to work with them.

Choosing and Configuring Audio Input and Output Drivers

When you install sound equipment, Windows usually configures itself automatically to use the proper sound drivers. If you need to tell Windows which sound drivers to use, or choose settings for your audio devices, including voice, you can configure Windows in the Sounds And Audio Device Properties dialog box. This dialog box has tabs for configuring when Windows plays sounds and which drivers Windows uses to play and record sounds. You can also use this dialog box to display the properties of all your audio and video devices. Follow these steps:

1. Choose Start | Control Panel, click Sounds, Speech, And Audio Devices, and click Sounds And Audio Devices. You see the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box.
2. Click the Audio tab, as shown in Figure 19-2, if it's not already selected.

Figure 19-2: Choosing devices for playing and recording sound and voice

3. Choose the driver used to play sounds by selecting the device from the list of available devices in the Sound Playback section of the Audio tab.
4. Tell Windows more about your speakers or headphones by clicking the Advanced button in the Sound Playback section of the Audio tab. You see the Advanced Audio Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 19-3. (You can also display it by clicking the Advanced button in the Speaker Settings part of the Volume tab.)

Figure 19-3: Use the Advanced Audio Properties dialog box to set the properties of your speakers or headphones.

5. Click the Speakers tab if it's not already selected. Click the Speaker Setup box and choose your computer's arrangement of speakers or headphones.
6. To set the amount of computing power your computer devotes to playing audio, click the Performance tab. Then, set the Audio Playback Hardware Acceleration slider and Sample Rate Conversion Quality slider. If your computer has a fast processor, move the sliders toward the Full and Best settings; otherwise, move them leftward to sacrifice sound quality for performance. Click OK.
7. To control the volume of your speakers or headphones, click the Volume button in the Sound Playback section of the Audio tab of the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box. You see the Volume Control window. Close the window when you've adjusted the volume.
8. Choose the driver used to record sounds by clicking in the Default Device box in the Sound Recording section of the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box and choosing a driver from the list that appears--to record sound from a microphone, choose the driver for the sound card into which the microphone is plugged.
9. To set the amount of computing power your computer devotes to recording audio, click the Advanced button in the Sound Recording section of the Audio tab (unless it appears gray--some sound cards don't support advanced settings). Then set the Audio Recording Hardware Acceleration slider and Sample Rate Conversion Quality slider. Click OK.
10. To control the volume when recording, click the Volume button in the Sound Recording section of the Audio tab. You see the Recording Control window. Close the window when you've set the recording volume.
11. If you use voice applications (for example, to dictate into a voice-recognition system such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, or to talk to other people over the Internet), click the Voice tab on the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box. You see sections for Voice Playback and Voice Capture, which you can set as described in steps 3-10.
12. Click OK to save your changes and exit the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box.

If you have trouble getting sounds to play, try the Windows Sound Troubleshooter.

Displaying the Status of Your Audio Devices

To see all the audio devices installed on your system, choose Start | Control Panel, click Sounds, Speech, And Audio Devices, and click Sounds And Audio Devices. You see the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box. Click the Hardware tab to see the dialog box shown in Figure 19-4.

Figure 19-4: The Hardware tab in the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box displays audio devices with their properties.

To display or change the settings for some devices, click the device and click the Properties button. Many of the devices are software only, notably the audio and video codecs (compressing and decompressing schemes) that determine the scheme used to encode sounds in audio and video files.

Controlling the Volume and Balance

You can control the volume and balance of the sound that goes into your microphones and comes out of your computer's speakers or headphones. You can also choose to mute (suppress) the sound for any audio device. You can display a Volume icon (a little gray loudspeaker icon) in the notification area on your taskbar: open the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box as described in the preceding section, click the Volume tab (if it's not already selected), and select the Place Volume Icon In The Taskbar check box so that a check appears.

To adjust the volume of your speakers, click the Volume icon on the taskbar once; you see a Volume slider and a Mute check box:

Drag the Volume slider up for louder volume or down for softer volume. Select the Mute check box to suppress audio output completely (such as when you are using your laptop on a train). Click outside the window to make it disappear.

To adjust the volume and balance of any audio device, double-click the Volume icon. You see the Volume Control window:

Another way to display this window is by clicking any of the Volume buttons on either the Audio or Voice tab of the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box.

The Volume Control window can display a volume, balance, and mute setting for each audio input and output device on your computer, depending on your sound card's capabilities. To choose which functions are included in the window, choose Options | Properties from the Volume Control menu bar to display the Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 19-5. Click the Playback setting to include audio output devices, the Recording setting to include audio input devices, or the Other setting to include other audio devices. (The only other audio device is Voice Commands, which allows you to use software that interprets your voice input as commands to control programs). You can also click check boxes for individual audio devices in the Show The Following Volume Controls list. Leave the Mixer Device setting alone--it's usually a feature of your audio card. Then click OK to return to the Volume Control dialog box.

Some sound cards come with their own mixer application. To use all of the features of your installed device, use the mixer program that comes with the sound card.

Figure 19-5: Configuring the Volume Control window

When you display volume controls for playback devices, the window is called Volume Control; when you display recording devices, it's called Recording Control.

If your speakers or headphones have a physical volume control knob, it's generally simpler to leave the Windows volume set fairly high, sending a strong signal through the wires, and just turn the knob to change the volume.

Choosing What Sounds Windows Makes

Windows comes with an array of sounds that it makes when certain events (Windows operations) occur. When you start Windows, for example, a rich, welcoming sound occurs; however, you might prefer the sound of a friend yelling "Hello!" You can control which sounds Windows plays when specified events occur by opening the Sounds And Audio Devices icon in the Control Panel. Click the Sounds tab of the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties dialog box to see the dialog box, as shown in Figure 19-6.

Figure 19-6: Associating sounds with Windows events

The Program Events box lists all the events that you can associate with a sound, including events that happen in Windows and other programs that use sound, such as Windows Messenger. If an event has no speaker icon to its left, no sound is currently assigned to that event. To change the sound for an event:

1. Click the event name in the Program Events box.
2. Click the down-arrow button at the right end of the Sounds box and choose a sound stored in a WAV file on your computer. You see a list of the sounds that come with Windows XP. Click the Browse button to find other WAV files, such as the ones you recorded yourself. To assign no sound to an event, choose (None) from the Sounds list.
3. To test out the sound, click the right-pointing triangle Play button to the right of the Sounds box.

The list of sounds in the Sound box is the list of WAV files (with extension .wav) in the C:\Windows\Media folder (assuming that Windows is installed on C:). You can also test sounds in the Open dialog box that you see when you click the Browse button. Select any sound that appears in the window and click the Play button at the bottom of the dialog box--the sound plays. If the sound is too long, click the black square to stop it.

You can save the set of sound associations as a sound scheme. Windows comes with a Windows Default sound scheme, which associates sounds with many events, and a No Sounds sound scheme, in which no sounds are associated with events. You can create your own sound schemes, too; simply associate the sounds you want to hear with the events that you want to prompt those sounds and click Save As.