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Audio Improvements in Windows Vista
Saturday, December 9th, 2006
A few weeks ago I wrote about the new sounds of Windows Vista and I made the point that 
sound is an important component of your experience using a Windows PC. As important as the new sounds are as an interface to the Windows UI, of equal importance is the system infrastructure that enables you to control and enjoy those sounds.
I personally use a Windows PC in three ways: 1) at work or at home for productivity, 2) at home (and when I travel) to enjoy media including music, videos and photos, and 3) at home in my recording studio (long story, but the short version is that my mom was glad when I got a real job with this computer science stuff). In all of these situations, having great control over the sounds on a Windows PC is important and prior to Windows Vista it was harder to do.
Imagine you are on a plane writing a document or reading email using Microsoft Office while listening to music stored on your laptop using Windows Media Player. You are listening to your favorite tunes at high volume and suddenly you make a mistake which causes Windows to give you an error sound. On Windows XP, there wasn’t really much you could do about it since there was a single volume control for all sounds generated on the PC — whether they came from Microsoft Word or Windows Media Player. This is just not a problem on Windows Vista because we have replaced the old Volume Control with the new Volume Mixer. To bring up the Volume Mixer, click on the "speaker" icon in the right side of the tray and select "Mixer," and you will not only see the master volume control for each output device, but also a volume control for each software application — in this case each application is treated as its own input. The best part is that you can mute the sounds from each application to suit your needs. Windows Vista Team Blog : Audio Improvements in Windows Vista
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