How to manage audio in Vista

[Lovepeaceguru]

I have a Vista 32 based PC and I am constantly irritated by the clumsiness with which it handles audio. I would welcome any suggestions for a better solution.

I habitually have Media Center running with BBC News 24. However, I am constantly encoding/ripping/remuxing various files and need to check them. At present that means exiting Media Center while I fire up whichever media player is going to deign to play my file (an entirely random process in my experience!). Also I may wish to output audio via SPDIF or HDMI or to my PC speakers and it all gets very fiddly and just generally winds me up.

I suppose the ideal solution would be a little mixer in the taskbar where with one click I could select my input/output channels.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[edDV]

Audio routing is different in Vista. It has a built in output mixer that can be assigned to speakers, S/PDIF etc. You can mix or mute by application.



Speaker output menus depend on your audio chipset




Input is audio device driver dependent



Input levels are set under device properties




There are third party Vista "patch panels" that I have yet to try.

[poisondeathray]

Is upgrading to XP an option?

[edDV]

Is upgrading to XP an option?

Vista audio is far superior to XP but applications need upgrade for full advantage.

Vista audio is now full 24bit/96KHz and up capable.

I really like the input by application mixer model. Applications can be written for multiple outputs to the mixer.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Vista can present problems with audio especially during playback. Pre-Vista software usually assumes DirectSound is the best option since it is hardware accelerated. Vista has done away with DirectSound to the extent that hardware acceleration is no more and everything is emulated with software. Software that assumes DirectSound under Vista may play videos etc poorly. In part, it depends on the particular sound card, too. Note, this isn't a sound card thing, it's a driver thing. Most sound cards have multiple types of drivers (e.g., DirectSound, WaveOut etc).