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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME You can finally take control over the sound level in Windows without taking your hands of the keyboard. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 2 free ways to control the sound from the Windows keyboardApril 11, 2001 By Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2001, Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2001, The Syracuse Newspapers I'm a jealous kind of guy. When my wife got a new PC with buttons all over the keyboard for operations such as opening the CD tray, getting the mail and muting the sound, I was green with envy. But now I am flush with excitement. No longer am I jealous of the way my wife controls the sound on her Windows PC. I can do the same thing. And I didn't have to spend a cent on a new keyboard. My newfound toy is a program called VolumeTray. It's a free Windows utility written by Slava Glory of Omsk, Russia. You can get it from one of the ZDNet file-download sites. Go to http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/ and type "VolumeTray" (without quotes) into the "Search for" box to locate the file. (The full download address is very long and complicated, so doing it this way guarantees that readers who type in these addresses won't have to worry about getting them right.) VolumeTray sits in the Windows System Tray. (The Tray is the "shelf" that also holds the small right-hand clock). Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Home mutes or unmutes the sound; pressing Ctrl-Alt-Up Arrow raises the volume and pressing Ctrl-Alt-Down Arrow lowers the volume. You can change any of these keyboard combinations. You can also raise and lower the volume by clicking very small tray icons with the left and right mouse buttons, although that's not as handy as being able to do it from the keyboard. VolumeTray adds two more features I found handy: You can assign a fourth key combination to for a customized function - I use it to open the standard Windows volume control panel - and you'll always be able to view a small green volume indicator in the Tray. You'll never have to wonder what level has been set because you can see the green indicator at a glance. VolumeTray works its magic in much the same way that a keyboard macro program would. Macros are little programs that type things or click the mouse button for you. After thinking about the way VolumeTray works, I opened the configuration screen of my all-time favorite Windows utility, a macro program called PowerPro, to see if it would do the same sort of thing. Yes, PowerPro can do this, I found out. I then created PowerPro versions of the functions done by VolumeTray, adding some extra functions. I'll explain what they do, but before I tell you about that, I need to explain that PowerPro is such a powerful and amazing program that it could easily take over your life if you're not careful. You could end up spending every evening for a month studying PowerPro's manual (it's a Microsoft Word document) and trying out the program's many functions (a few hundred, at last count). And PowerPro is free, so don't delay if you want to see what can be done with Windows. You'll see a link to PowerPro's site from this article: http://twcny.rr.com/technofile/texts/bit010301.html. Using PowerPro, I created keyboard actions to control the sound to a finer degree than I could do with VolumeTray. Here's a partial list: Toggle Mute on and off: Alt-Shift-End Trim sound level a slight amount: Alt-Down Arrow Trim sound level in larger increments: Alt-Shift-Down Arrow Raise sound level a slight amount: Alt-Up Arrow Raise sound level in larger increments: Alt-Shift-Up Arrow Raise sound level to 75 percent full volume: Alt-Home You could do more, of course. You could have PowerPro adjust only the WAV volume, not the overall volume, for example. And you can make larger or smaller steps than I did in raising and lower the sound level. PowerPro makes this easy. And so does VolumeTray, without the frills that PowerPro adds. Either way, you can finally take control over the sound level in Windows without taking your hands of the keyboard. |