Share in my geek euphoria!

[Borgschulze]

@john_childs

Here’s an example of using per application volume control in Vista.
Open up YouTube in a browser and start playing a video.
Now open the windows volume mixer (right-click on the speaker icon and select volume mixer)
You’ll see the open applications that are using sound listed in the volume mixer
From there you can easily mute the Windows System Sounds so you don’t get Windows beeps and sounds while playing the YouTube video. So no more “bings” caused by an arriving email while watching YouTube or a DVD.

That’s neat stuff and makes Vista more media player friendly than XP.

Your gamer sound card is not an EOL product. Creative has drivers now that use their Alchemy solution to make use of the EAX hardware on the sound card.

The problem now comes from games that explicitly check for hardware audio processing (acceleration) to do their audio effects processing rather than allowing software to do it. The Alchemy solution means that those games don’t see the EAX hardware like they are expecting which causes them to fall back to lesser sound options with lesser effects. That’s poor programming on the part of the games. They made assumptions they shouldn’t have. There is nothing Creative can do about that. See if those games offer a patch for Vista support and complain to the game makers who have broken games.

In XP when I turn Youtube’s volume down, my music stays just as loud. When I turn down volume in VLC, my music still stays the same volume.

I do not use a “Gamer” sound card, I don’t buy into marketing like that. I use the “onboard” Realtek ALC850 that is bundled with my DFI NF4 Ultra-D motherboard (It’s actually named “Krajan Audio module”). I thought I typed out somewhere, maybe not in this thread, or maybe on another forum, but I remember saying I never have and never will own a Creative sound card.

As for the noises when I’m watching a DVD… Which I rarely do, I have all Windows sounds, as well as MSN sounds disabled, as well as visual notifications. My computer doesn’t do anything unless I tell it to. I even have “Optimize Hard Disk While Idle” disabled, I don’t want my computer making extra noise because it feels the need to defragment. One exception is GMail notifier, which pops up, but makes no noise.

What do you mean by “Media Player Friendly”?

Here is my situation.

Music - D:/Music/Artist_Album-Year-RLSGRP -> Double click playlist file imports playlist to Foorbar2000 and plays instantly.

Movies - Put DVD in drive, double click drive in My Computer, opens in VLC.

Video Files - D:/Videos -> Double click file opens in VLC.

Games - Right click Desktop - Start -> Programs -> Games -> Click once to open selected game.

Internet - “My Home” hotkey on keyboard.

E-Mail - Double click GMail Notifier.

Volume controls - All on keyboard.

Login to PC if I reboot (rarely) - Press Ctrl+Alt+Del -> Type password hit enter, computer gets locked (Winkey + L) every time I leave the house, and only my Mom lives here, just incase ninjas fly through my window and try to send dumb messages on MSN.

@john_childs

In XP the volume control in individual applications controls the global volume. It changes the volume for everything.

I don’t even know what to say to that. That just isn’t how XP works.

[john_childs]

@Borgschulze

I do not use a “Gamer” sound card, I don’t buy into marketing like that. I use the “onboard” Realtek ALC850 that is bundled with my DFI NF4 Ultra-D motherboard (It’s actually named “Krajan Audio module”). I thought I typed out somewhere, maybe not in this thread, or maybe on another forum, but I remember saying I never have and never will own a Creative sound card.

Then why are you even worrying about the hardware audio processing for game effects? Creative is the only company that is doing that with their EAX support. No other general consumer cards are doing that. Creative is the only consumer card affected by Vista’s change.

You said “Vista has gone backwards in the sound department, not using hardware acceleration anymore, completely software. That’s how I have read it at least.” That is only relevant if you have a Creative card with EAX. A complete non-issue for people with other brands of sound cards. EAX is proprietary. Based on your complaint about software processing I assumed you had a Creative card cause only someone with a creative card would care about that.

I don’t even know what to say to that. That just isn’t how XP works.

It is how XP and all previous versions of Windows works.

Open up Windows Media Player in XP along with the Windows Audio Mixer.
Play some music and move the volume control in WMP. The global volume control in the Windows Audio Mixer will change.

Applications that don’t change the global volume control are doing their own digital mixing and digital volume control. Doing a digital volume control affects the quality of the sound. Digitally decreasing the volume means that you are decreasing the effective bit depth of the sound. Digital volume controls are a great way to turn that 16-bit MP3 into what sounds like a 10-bit CD.

Foobar defaults to using the global volume control. I believe that you can change it to use a DSP digital volume control but no audio purist will do that cause it just degrades the sound.

[dan_de_man]

@UniTyler

I Down-graded … to Linux!

fixed

[rob.northcott]

@forrestunifreak

Our very first computer (probably an HP with W95 or something) had a turbo button. We didn’t understand it so we just left it on all the time.

The turbo button switched the clock frequency of the processor. It was common on PCs with 386 and 486 processors. For example, with a 66MHz 486 it would switch the clock between 66MHz (“turbo on”) and 33MHz (turbo off). The main purpose of it was to slow the machine down when running old software that ran too fast - people tended to use the processor clock for timing, or just write software to run as fast as possible, so when PC speeds started increasing at a steep rate it meant that old stuff ran far too fast, which could be a pain (especially for games).

So the point of the turbo button was to slow things down, not speed them up. It just sounded a better name than “brake”. Usually the turbo switch was left on.

Rob

[Joe2005]

^^^^
Thats good.

My firend had a turbo button on his POS computer, it was funny.

[Jerrick]

Ahh, found it.

Im building up a new comp, and for fun, ordered a new keyboard.

CPU: Intel 2.6ghz quad core. Very easily OCed to 3.6ghz+. I went with Intel cause they are better for multitasking, so photoshop, premiere, and all those programs are going to run so fast.
Mobo: Gigabyte, fsb 1600/1333, lots of PCI/e, Pata, Sata, USb, Firewire, good amount of room for ram, more stuff.
Ram, 4gig, 2x2 corsair
PSU: Corsai 520w, may go higher.
Vid card: I dont play games much at all, so im going for a ATI Sapphire 512mb.

Thats about it, all inside a Coolermaster Centurion 534 case.

[dudewithasock]

@Jerrick

Vid card: I dont play games much at all, so im going for a ATI Sapphire 512mb.

Lol, that’s plenty to play most modern games very easily, so I don’t see your logic here. You probably could’ve gotten a 256mb one.

[Jerrick]

@dudewithasock

Lol, that’s plenty to play most modern games very easily, so I don’t see your logic here. You probably could’ve gotten a 256mb one.

If I was a gamer I would of gone for 1gig.

EDIT: Or dual 1gigs. Thats a pretty popular option right now.

[dudewithasock]

@Jerrick

If I was a gamer I would of gone for 1gig.

EDIT: Or dual 1gigs. Thats a pretty popular option right now.

You and your stupid money.

[john_childs]

@Jerrick

CPU: Intel 2.6ghz quad core.

Quad core is a bit of a toss up. For most uses it is better to get a dual core with more GHz that the equivalent priced quad core with less GHz. Most current software doesn’t take full advantage of the extra cores. The exception being some rendering programs that are well threaded and designed to split rendering tasks on multiple cores. Most everything else does better on a dual core with more MHz.

[Jerrick]

@john_childs

Quad core is a bit of a toss up. For most uses it is better to get a dual core with more GHz that the equivalent priced quad core with less GHz. Most current software doesn’t take full advantage of the extra cores. The exception being some rendering programs that are well threaded and designed to split rendering tasks on multiple cores. Most everything else does better on a dual core with more MHz.

No thanks.

[Loosemoose]

@johnfoss

However neither of them works on my current iMac. It’s very frustrating to have two scanners, neither of which works…

Hey John, you running Leopard? HP’s support for Macs is woeful, my GF’s HP All-in-one refused to work even with the official mac drivers installed from the original CD, and the ‘leopard fix’ applied (also official, from the website). I was on the verge of using the open source Mac alternative (can’t remember the name off the top of my head), when suddenly HP released a new driver that was installed with a regular update, and suddenly it all started working.

HP suck for support. That’s why I buy Canon. Its better, works nicely and they have good software & drivers.

Loose.

[Jerrick]

Ahh… no one else is having fun upgrading comps or anything like that.

Do not fear, I shall resurrect you once again my beloved thread, and I will stuff you with pictures.