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.

The default options are sometimes not that practicable, for instance when a fullscreen application is running. It would mean to either leave the fullscreen mode or modify the sounds settings in the application if sound controls are provided (unless an external sound control is available).

Volumouse 2, which was recently released as a beta version, adds another sound controlling option to the Windows operating system. The main purpose of the application is to add sound volume controls to the mouse, or more precisely the mouse wheel.

The application is developed by Nirsoft, which means that it offers the same level of quality that Nirsoft applications share.

The majority of configuration options are displayed directly after startup. A new feature of Volumouse 2 Beta is the ability to define a total of 12 mouse controlling rules, instead of just five as in previous versions.

The mixer device is selected from the pulldown at the top. Below that are the first six rules of which two are active by default. It is possible to change the volume by holding down the Alt key on the keyboard, or the left mouse button, while using the scroll wheel of the mouse to turn the volume up or down.

Rules can be applied to the default playback or recording device, or any other of the connected sound devices. It is furthermore possible to make the rules apply to all channels or only specific ones. The More button loads an advanced options window.

Here it is possible to change the design and layout of the volume control that is displayed when the feature is activated, hotkeys for increasing or decreasing the volume (without the mouse wheel) and apply the rules to a specific application only which is only available under Windows 7 and Vista.

Volumouse 2 adds several features to the program, some of which have already been mentioned in the article. The program now supports 64-bit and 32-bit applications, freely configurable on-screen display indicators and support for multi-monitor systems.

Volumouse’s main feature is the ability to control the volume directly, without having to use the control panel or system tray to do so. Windows 7 and Vista users benefit from application specific sound controls, which add several other options to the software. It is for instance possible to mute all sounds on the system except Skype when someone calls, or to disable all sounds but the one that needs to be recorded in a sound recording software.

Volumouse 2 is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit executable. The program is currently in beta, the final version will be released later this year.

Auto Mute is a portable volume control software that provides access to several interesting features. It can for instance be used to automatically mute sound on logoff, suspend and shutdown so that the next system start is quiet.

A global shortcut is offered to turn sounds back on after the computer system has been started. The default shortcut is Ctrl F10 which can be changed in the program’s options if necessary.

The only other options provided by the volume control software are to run the program during startup and to play a computer beep sound whenever the state of the sound changes from mute to on and vice verse.

Auto Mute is a portable software program for the Windows operating system. The program is compatible with many Microsoft operating systems including Windows 7 and Windows Vista. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

If you are that kind of user you might like the little script I found at the Donation Coder forum that displays a customizable mute message on the computer desktop. The idea is basically to display a test alerting the user to the fact that the music has been muted on the desktop.

The script has been modified several times by user requests so that it is now possible to customize it extensively. The position of the display can be changed as well as the font and style of it.

It can be downloaded as a portable software executable or as a Auto hotkey script. The scripts options are available in the system tray after right-clicking on the program’s icon.

It comes with seven great looking skins that use alpha blending and fade effects. A total of six hotkeys can be set in the application which comes with three pre-configured ones to lower and raise the volume plus to mute the sound totally.

Each time a hotkey is used the volume control skin will be shown, the changes are made visible and the volume control fades slowly away if there is no further user input.

The program options provide access to some interesting features. A custom change amount for the volume sliders can be chosen by entering a percentage value in the program. That could be interesting if you want to fine tune the volume of the music.

The Fade Delay and Speed can be changed in the options but more interesting than that is probably to select a custom sound mixer.

3RVX looks definitely nice and could be an option for users who like stylish little applications. The Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 is required to run this application.

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.