Windows 7 : Windows Sound Recorder & Volume Control

Windows Sound Recorder

Sound Recorder has been included with Windows since its earliest days. It is not feature rich by any stretch of the imagination—in fact, it enables you only to record an audio file and save it to the hard drive on your computer. Whereas the older version of Sound Recorder enabled you to record an audio file, change the speed of the recorded playback, and do basic editing and conversion of the saved output, this functionality is missing with Windows 7. Sound Recorder can work with files that are in the Windows Media Audio (.wma). format.

To start Sound Recorder, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, Sound Recorder. This gives you the Sound Recorder interface, shown in Figure 1

Really only one option is available: Start Recording. Clicking this button enables you to record audio using your PC’s microphone. When you have recorded all the information you need, click the Stop Recording button (which appears after a recording is started). When you stop recording, you get a Save As dialog box asking you where to save the recorded output, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The Save As dialog box, which defaults to the Documents library.

Here, you need to enter a filename to save the file; you can optionally enter artist and album information by clicking on the function links at the bottom of the Save dialog and entering the desired data (see Figure 3). If you enter the artist and album information, you can access this information later inside Windows Media Player and the Documents library.

Figure 3. The Save As dialog box, with optional tag information entered.

The file location defaults to the Documents library, but you can change the location where the file is saved by clicking the Documents icon in the sidebar (you might need to click the Browse Folders button) and browsing to the library where you want to save the file.

If you saved the file in the default location, you can click Start, Documents and see the file that you just recorded; if you specified the artist and album information, it is displayed here as well (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. An audio file in the Documents library. Notice the tag information that was entered earlier.

Volume Control

The Volume Control accessory is basically a no-brainer. It provides a pop-up volume control sporting balance, mute, and other controls for your audio subsystem. Whether you’re playing radio stations from the Web, playing CDs from your CD drive, listening to TV (if you have a TV tuner card), or recording sound files, you need access to these controls from time to time. Of course, if you don’t have a working sound card installed, this accessory isn’t available—or, at least, it doesn’t do anything. A little-known fact for many people is that this accessory has two sets of controls—one for recording and one for playback.

1.	To open the standard volume controls, simply click the little speaker icon in the notification area on the Windows 7 taskbar (see Figure 5). Figure 5. The volume mixer, as seen when you click the speaker icon in the notification area.
2.	You can alter the system volume setting by dragging the volume slider up or down. You can mute the output by clicking the picture of the speaker at the bottom of the column. If you want to see another volume control, you can select Mixer at the bottom of the column. Figure 6 shows the standard volume control. Figure 6. The basic volume control for setting playback volume. Note The Device slider links all the available sliders together and controls both up and down directions for all sliders. The position of the Device slider also represents the highest volume that any device can be set to. This is important because each Application slider can be set to a volume lower than the one set by the Device slider. Its somewhat confusing described in words, so try it in practice to see it in action.
3.	In the Volume Mixer, you typically see two sliders, one for the audio device and one in the Applications group for the system sounds. You might see additional sliders for each running application. These sliders are linked, so adjusting the speaker volume changes the volume level for system sounds. Sometimes, though, you want the alert sounds to be lower than other sounds coming out of your computer, so you can independently control the sliders for each represented application. If you happen to be watching a YouTube video with low audio, you don’t want to be blown away by your New Email sound.

If you are doing any sound recording, be sure to view the recording controls, too. You can access both the playback and recording level controls as described next.

The controls you see by following these steps are a simplified version of the overall volume settings. To access the detailed volume settings, choose Start, Control Panel, look under Hardware and Sound in the default view and Sound if you have changed to Icon view, Playback; double-click the Speakers entry in the Sound window; and choose the Levels tab. Your sound system’s capabilities and default settings determine the format of the volume controls you see. On one of my computers, the controls look like what you see in Figure 7.

In this window, you can manually adjust the individual levels of the output elements. You can mute individual output elements by clicking the small speaker icon to the right of the volume sliders.

If you are using a sound card with support for more than two speakers, you can also run basic diagnostics and choose the speaker configuration here by clicking the Speakers item in the Playback window and clicking the Configure button.

More options are available to you, as well. Here they are, tab by tab:

• Playback— Use this tab to select the output device you are using. In the vast majority of cases, you will have only one option. However, if you have speakers that plug in and USB speakers, you can choose one of them.

• Recording— This tab works much like the Playback tab, but for recording devices. Many podcasting microphones use USB to connect instead of the usual input jack.

• Sounds— This is the standard Sounds tab that has been included in versions of Windows since time immemorial. You can select from sound themes in the Sound Scheme pull-down and modify which sounds do what and when in the Program Events list. One new thing for Windows 7 is that there are actual themes now—14 new ones plus two more for Ultimate users, to be exact.

• Communications— In this new tab, you can actually tell Windows how to deal with the volume if you happen to be using your computer for phone calls. The default is set to decrease the volume by 80%.