IDEA: Mute sound from all windows/applications except Whitelisted

[magician62]

My first guess is this may not even be possible

Scenario:- Quite often I will be multitasking. On one monitor I may be watching a movie, or listening to music, whilst on another I might be surfing this forum, the web, or trying out a new application. Some website still insit on playing sound when you open them, which interupts what I want to listen too, the same with some older applications.

What I would like to be able to do is Whitelist applications or websites where I would like to here sound, and all the rest not hear a peep. Obviously this facility would be easily toggleable on/off.

Put simply I want to only hear what I want, not what others think I should hear.

One issue i can see is that the window/app i want to hear sound from, will likely be the one without focus.

[skwire]

As far as I know, app-specific volume control is built into Vista and above.  In regards to XP, there is a $20 app called Indie Volume. From what I recall about it, though, it doesn't work all that well for some folks.  YMMV, as they say.

[MilesAhead]

Not exactly what you want but I've found it very useful for browsing.  I run Chromium snapshot on Windows.  You can download from here:
http://build.chromiu...omium/snapshots/Win/

I recommend the Win32 zip rather than installer.  It's easier to back it off if you get one with bugs(which are usually minor such as losing favicions on bookmarks.)

Click the Wrench then Options, Under the hood, next to Privacy click Content Settings.  For Plugins click Block All.  Now you don't get Sudden Loud Noise(tm) when you land on a page.  If I want to play a music sample such as on AllMusic.com, I right click the track and click "run this plugin."  Not perfect but better than sudden noise. Also the setting has a white list but I haven't tried it.

For other apps you may find something on Softpedia.com  They have tons of freeware.  Also try

http://alternativeto.net/

http://www.quixey.com/

[magician62]

Many thanks for the reply, Indie looks quite interesting, and is Win 7 compatable. Though your comment about app-specific volume control in Vista was interesting. I was not aware of the feature, moved from XP to 7, so have been playing, and it looks like it may serve my needs. I will also give Indie Volume a try after I get an better understanding of how the built in facility works, as it may provide extra functionality.

[MilesAhead]

Vista/W7 has individual volume level and mute for each audio source, but only after it exists.  So web pages that blare sound still zap you before you can mute them. When going to pages I knew did this I used to mute all speakers until that browser showed up, then mute it only.  pita way of doing it though.

[magician62]

I did an experiment, and set IE to Zero volume, then closed all instances of IE. On re-starting IE, volume was still Zeroed, though I have yet to see what happens on re-boot, will find that out in the morning.

[MilesAhead]

Right.  But as soon as you put the volume up to hear something, then forget about it, you get zapped again.

Plus getting the volume control to come up is a nuisance.  I'd look for an enhanced mixing app with more sophisticated settings if going that route.

[steeladept]

Right.  But as soon as you put the volume up to hear something, then forget about it, you get zapped again.

Plus getting the volume control to come up is a nuisance.  I'd look for an enhanced mixing app with more sophisticated settings if going that route.

-MilesAhead (August 06, 2011, 03:22 PM)

Seems like a perfect job for some sort of AHK script or something.  Store default settings and revert back after 15 minutes (or whatever).  Maybe it isn't that easy, but it is an idea....If it turns into a doable project, perhaps an enhancement of the idea is to set a toggle where a second "default" is set to be the alternative setting which can be implemented in a right click dialog or something.

[MilesAhead]

The trouble with that approach is every new app that comes up that makes noise is going to have a separate control.  There's no way to anticipate it other than setting the max main volume control.

Since the most common offender is a browser going onto a page with sound that's spiked way up, that's where I'd concentrate the solution. It's been my experience even if you have the main volume control down very low, just enough to hear system sounds, the web pages are spiked so high they will blare at just about any setting. The place to disconnect them from the audio is in the browser(s).

[ppass]

I used to play around with Indie Volume in XP and it had several issues. I reported them all to the developer, but he was slow in improving the software, so I gave up using it.

As far as I know, app-specific volume control is built into Vista and above.

-skwire (August 06, 2011, 09:54 AM)

Where is this sound control? In the Windows 7 control panel, there is something called "Manage audio devices". On the tab called "Communications", "Windows can automatically adjust the volume of different sounds when using the PC to place or receive telephone calls". Other than that, I see no setting for the volume per application.

I also have a "smartaudio" icon in the control panel but it does not give me the choice to select the audio level per application.

Could someone help me find the app-specific volume controls in Windows 7?

[JavaJones]

Click the volume icon in the system tray then Mixer. You should see most *running* apps shown with their own respective volume controls. Set the volume the way you want it per-app, it will remember the setting between sessions of that app and sessions of Windows. Of course you must have the app running to set the volume, so simply start an app you want to set volume for if it's not showing up in that list. There may be other reasons it would not show up in the list, but pretty much all apps I've ever wanted to control have been there. A very nice addition to Win7.

- Oshyan

[ppass]

Found it, thanks. However, there is no sound control for IE, Firefox, etc.

[JavaJones]

Ahhh yes, correction to what I said above: there has to be audio coming from whatever you want to adjust. So just start playing a YouTube video or something and you'll see the volume for that app appear (in the case of Firefox it might be the plugin container, and unfortunately this may not control e.g. embedded audio in a web page, so you may need to find an example of that). A little bit of a pain, yes, but think of what it would be like if it tried to show all apps. All *running* apps would be nice though. I suppose it just looks for apps making calls to the audio system and presents volume control for each audio stream. Maybe not ideal, but a big improvement over XP.

- Oshyan