Once verified that Firefox was not playing sound at all I checked if I could hear audio on the local system which worked fine.

I remembered that Windows 7 had audio mixers for every application capable of playing audio. It could have happened that the volume for the Firefox browser was all turned down. Turned out it was not unfortunately.

Next check was the Google Chrome browser, and this is when things got really weird. I could not hear any audio in Chrome either. Checked on YouTube and several other video hosting sites and sound was not playing.

My next guess was a issue with Adobe’s Flash plugin. I switched to HTML5 playback on YouTube, but audio was still not playing. A check on Adobe’s website revealed that the latest Flash version was installed on the system.

My next – and last guess – was that the installed audio driver was corrupt somehow. I did not put to much hope into the solution though as it felt unrealistic as audio was still playing on the desktop.

Still, I went to the Logitech website and downloaded the latest driver version for my G930 wireless headset. I checked playback in Firefox and Chrome after driver installation, and guess what; Audio was playing again.

I have no idea how this happened in first place. Lets take a look at the troubleshooting steps again:

• 1. Restart the browser, play again in same browser.
• 2. Check audio on other sites
• 3. Check Mixer in Windows
• 4. Check audio playback in a second browser
• 5. Check if the Adobe Flash plugin is up to date
• 6. Check another audio playback option, e.g. HTML5
• 7. Reinstall the audio driver

Is there anything else that you can do if those steps do not fix the issue on your end? Nothing comes to mind to be honest. Anyone with additional suggestions?

I remember that I once forgot to set my phone to vibrate only and that I felt totally embarrassed when I received a call in public. Others do not seem to share the same reservations that I do though. A recent trend is youngsters walking around with what I call the poor man’s car radio; A mobile phone playing loud music on the street.

You can use software on a computer to automatically adjust the volume. Volume Concierge is such a program. It can be used to schedule volume changes on a Windows system.

You could use it to automatically lower the volume to 20% in the evening which is nice if you have kids that go to bed early. Another option is to turn off the volume after the workday and turn it on again in the morning.

The program uses so called volume rules that the user can define. Each rule consists of a day (or all days or weekends), a starting time and a volume level.

You can add as many rules as you want and turn them on or off manually. The program can only be minimized into the Windows system tray. Despite having an option to schedule sound volume changes on the system it does not use the built-in Windows Task Scheduler to run those tasks. This is one of the shortcomings of the program. It would have been better if the program would only need to run on volume changing tasks.

Volume Concierge adds itself to the startup of the operating system. This can be disabled with a right-click on the system tray icon or other autostart editing applications. Removing the tool from autostart however removes all of its functionality from the system unless it is manually started by the user.

The program is free to use but asks you to register it on first run with an email address.

Windows users who want to try Volume Concierge can download the program from the official website.

Alternatives that I have covered before are Auto Mute which can be configured to automatically mute the operating system’s volume and the new Windows 7 volume control options.

The volume of all other sounds on the system was automatically adjusted whenever calls where placed or received. He first thought that it was a issue in Skype, but could not find a configuration setting responsible for this behavior.

I on the other hand knew that it was a new feature of the Windows 7 operating system and not related to any voip software installed on the system.

Windows 7 will automatically adjust the volume of all sounds on the system whenever telephone calls are made.

Here is how you configure the communication volume under Windows 7. For that, you need to open the Windows Control Panel. Click on the start orb in the lower left corner of the screen and select control panel from the start menu that opens up.

Select Hardware and Sound from the list of applets and on the next screen Sound.

Switch to the Communications tab on the Sound window. You should see a screen like the one shown below.

It reads: Windows can automatically adjust the volume of different sounds when you are using your PC to place or receive telephone calls.

Four options are available on that screen:

• Mute all other sounds
• Reduce the volume of other sounds by 80%
• Reduce the volume of other sounds by 50%
• Do nothing

If you do not want the automatic volume adjustment you need to select Do nothing from the selection menu. The three remaining options either mute all other sounds completely or to a certain extent.

Click on the apply button after you have made the selection. If you have selected do nothing you should not experience any more automatic volume adjustments when placing or receiving phone calls on the system.

In this tutorial I will show you which tools to use to help troubleshoot sound on your Ubuntu-based machine as well as make that sound sound as good as possible. This article will focus not only on Ubuntu but GNOME as well. The reason being is that the GNOME tools are outstanding.

Troubleshooting

Before we get into managing the sound on your system, let’s take a look at some troubleshooting tools you can use. The first thing you need to do is to check to make sure your sound card was detected. To do this you can open up a terminal window and issue the command:

aplay -l

which should output something like:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC262 Analog [ALC262 Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

What you see above is a listing for an on-board Intel soundchip which was recognized by the Ubuntu installation.  If you don’t, however, see your card listed you should issue the command:

lspci -v

Which will list ALL of your PCI devices. If you see your sound card listed, that is a good thing. But if you are still not getting any sound it could mean no drivers are present. If this is the case, head over to the Alsa Project and search for suitable drivers. On this site you will want to match your sound card chipset with a compatible driver. When you have found the compatible driver install it and then you will have to add it to the kernel. Type the command:

sudo modprobe snd-

and hit the Tab key twice. You will want to view all of the listings to make sure the module you need is there.  When you find the exact name of the module you need you can load it with the command:

sudo modprobe snd-XXX

Where XXX is the actual name of the module you need to load. You should now have sound loaded for your current session. The problem will be if and when you reboot your machine  you will lose the sound (because that module will not reload).

In order to ensure that your module is loaded when you boot, you can add it to the file /etc/modules. All you will want to do is add the name of the module (the same name you loaded with the modprobe command) at the end of the file. Save that file and now, when you reboot, you will have sound.

Muted sound

Figure 1

One of the biggest problems I see with sound is a muted volume. For some installations this wants to be the default setting. Figure 1 shows muted sound by way of the speaker with an X to the right of it. to unmute this all you need to left click on the speaker icon and then drag the volume control up. This will unmute the sound for you. Or you can right click the speaker icon and uncheck the Mute option.

Sound preferences

Figure 2

If you have a need to dig deeper into the preferences of your sound go to System > Preferences > Sound to open up the graphical sound tool (see Figure 2). With this tool you can manage:

• Desktop sound effects.
• Choose sound hardware.
• Mange input devices.
• Select output devices.
• Manage Alsa-aware applications.

This is one of those tools you will most likely never see. But when you need it, you’ll be glad it’s there.

Final thoughts

Linux sound is not as difficult as it is made out to be. Even when your sound card doesn’t seem to be working, there are plenty of ways to resolve the issue – you just have to know where to look. And of course, there are plenty more tools available than shown here. We haven’t touched upon the KDE sound options (we’ll look at those on a later date).

This is beneficial for users who feel irritated by the sound volume after some time of playing and those that want to reduce it to fall faster into sleep. The portable application will control the system volume of the operating system meaning it is compatible with all applications that are running on it.

The user can define the total duration of the process, the time the volume duration should begin and the target volume in the end. The duration can range from 5 minutes to 120 minutes while the sound volume can be set between 0 and 100%.

The application will display a graph detailing the sound volume progression over the entire time. Sweet Dreams can furthermore perform one of the following actions after reaching the total duration: shutdown, switch off monitor, standby or hibernate.

English users should not be worried by the German homepage of the developer as the application itself has been completely translated into English.

iWOW exists for Windows, OS X and iPods. On OS X, only an iTunes plug-in is available. On Windows, either an iTunes plug-in or system-wide software are available. The system-wide software can obviously be used to improve sound in all applications, such as games. On an iPod, a hardware-based adapter is available which plugs into the iPod to improve its sound. I haven’t tested the iTunes version.

The software or iPod adapter are unfortunately not free. The iTunes plug-in costs $40, the system-wide software costs $50 and the adapter costs $80. This sounds expensive but it sometimes included in bundles and discounts, MacUpdate for example offered it in their bundle.

SRS Labs, the makers of iWOW, claims to create ‘an expansive sound stage’ and to ‘restore audio cues that are buried in the original source material’. I personally don’t understand what that means, but have heard the sound quality it produces… even on my laptop speakers!

The software, at least on the Mac, is very easy to install. All one must do is run it. It is then installed in iTunes.

The question is whether or not it is worth $40. 51 reviews on MacUpdate give it 4/5 on average.

A few features like ‘auto-detect’ are missing in version 3, but were present in version 2. SRS Labs promise that this will be offered in an update in a few weeks.

MP3 playback was still working but games would not launch anymore stating that no audio devices could be found. A check of the sound hardware in the Control Panel was positive. The audio hardware was listed and reported as working properly.

Next step was to check whether the Windows Audio service was up and running. This was done by pressing [Windows R], typing [services.msc] and hitting [Enter]. The Windows Audio service was set to automatic but not started. That was strange but was solved easily by right-clicking the entry and selecting the [Start] entry from the context menu.

The Sound properties were showing the screenshot above stating that no audio device was installed on the computer. The message “There Are No Active Mixer Devices Available” disappeared after starting the Windows Audio service.

Update: Some Windows users have noted that the workaround or fix described above did not work when they tried to resolve the “there are no active mixer devices available” error message.

Another option to troubleshoot the issue is to go into the Device Manager (Start->Control panel -> system -> Hardware -> Device Manager ) and see if one or several of the PC’s audio devices have exclamation marks next to them. If that is the cause you could visit the manufacturer’s website and download the latest sound driver for the device. Install the new sound driver and restart the computer afterwards to see if it resolves the no active mixer error message.

Check out the comments below for additional tips on resolving the issue.

The application provides different sound sets and graphics that go along well with each other to provide artificial nature right on your desktop. The lite version of the application is completely free to use and comes with ten different settings like Rainy Day, Deep Forest, Thunderstorm and Oceans Edge.

The quality of the sounds is pretty good and does not become boring or repetitive after a while. Each setting makes use of different sound samples that work well together. Samples can be added or removed during playback, like Light Wind and a Campfire to your Ocean sounds ? No problem.

The sounds are divided into Background Sounds, like Rain, Night or Ocean and Random Sounds like Thunder Roll (six different !) and animals. Sounds can be recorded, the application makes use of the Windows Sound Recorder. I received an error but was able to record sounds normally with Audacity. Any other program that can record sounds directly from the sound card will do.

Atmosphere Lite is a nice application for those hours where you just want to relax. Could be very nice as a general background sound during night or breaks during the day. The two commercial versions of the product come with additional songs, longer loops and import functions.

One last remark. The Lite version comes with four so called Brainwaves that are supposed to stimulate the brain. Did not work for me though, found the four available ones rather annoying.

Daniel_K was also told to stop distributing drivers for sound cards that would enable features that were not intended for them. The community outcry is huge. The thread was started yesterday and it reached page 26 with most forum users vowing to never buy a Creative product again siding exclusively with Daniel_K.

I think the main point that is making it extremely frustrating for most users is the fact that one guy was able to fix driver issues while the Creative driver developer team failed. A smart move if you ask me would be to hire that guy right of the forum unless there is a reason why the development took that long.

The drivers are already spreading on various torrent websites and it seems that this is going to be a public relations nightmare for Creative.

Sound loops and effects are listed in categories like Buttons, Comic & Film FX or Music Loops but can also be browsed using the tag cloud on the main page as well. More than 25000 sound loops and effects are available on Soundsnap starting with loops of just a few seconds to loops of several minutes.

The sound effects in each category can be sorted by various criteria such as duration (longest, shortest), most popular and highest rated.

When a Buddie of mine enters Teamspeak I have to turn Internet Radio off to be able to communicate with him normally. I have found a way to do just that, turn off Internet Radio or any other music from my music player but leave the sound output levels of Windows as they are.

XMPlay does that. All that needs to be done is to set two global variables in XMPlay which can be done by right-clicking the music player and selecting Options % Stuff from the menu. Click on the shortcuts tab in the left window and add the new shortcuts that you like.

I did add two: Current Track – Stop and Current Track – Play / Pause. I used ALT CTRL M and ALT CTRL N repsectively and set both shortcuts to global. This is done by selecting the shortcut afterwards and checking the “Global’ setting.

It is now possible to start and stop any music played in XMPlay in every other application in Windows. Even in games like Team Fortress 2. Very handy if you ask me.

Read More:

XMPlay
Teamspeak

The best feature of Harddisk Ogg is that it sits in the tray once configured and you can start the recording with a single mouse click and end it with another one. The quality of the recorded audio can be configured in detail including bitrate, mono or stereo recording and encoding quality.

Harddisk Ogg offers several normalization modes that amplify the input signal to a constant volume. You need to download and move the lame encoder into the folder of Harddisk Ogg to be able to record mp3 files directly.

I would like to explain why a tool like Harddisk Ogg might be useful now or in the near future. Several countries have already laws in place that make it illegal to copy music from Cd’s if the CD is copy protected. They still allow however to record the songs using audio devices and compare this to the recording of radio with audio tapes.

This is also great if you want to rip audio from music videos that you found on the internet or from youtube videos.

Once installed you can configure up to five rules that define when and how you are able to control the volume with your mouse wheel. By default two rules are already in place. You can change the volume with the mouse wheel by pressing ALT or by clicking the left mouse button. You might want to change this behavior if you want to use volumouse in games for instance. ALT and left mouse are often used for other actions and this could pose problems.

It is very easy to change the key that is used to change the volume or define other actions (program window must be active..). This is a very good way to use on conjunction with your video player. The rule could be: When my videoplayer is active I want to change the volume with the mouse wheel.

Very easy and simple to use, works with all windows operating systems starting with windows 98.