Endless Paradigm

I think Windows 9x up to XP had a lovely volume control system which did what it did, except that MS obviously needed to do something drastic when making Vista so they decided to redo the entire audio system.
It seems that they thought that having all the controls that earlier Windows had would be too confusing to users, so they scrapped them and now you pretty much only have a master volume control.

So if there's an app which outputs to both Wave and SW Synth and you don't like the balance, you can simply adjust this in XP, but in Vista/7, you're stuck (unless the app itself gives you volume controls for each; even so, I like the convenience of being able to quickly adjust things in XP via shortcut keys with the Sound Control app).

What's perhaps more annoying is that on my speakers, anything above 4% is absurdly loud.  Actually XP had the same issue with the master volume slider, however since you've got additional Wave and SW Synth (and others) sliders, you can keep the master volume at 5% and use the Wave volume to give more fine grain control.  On Windows 7, I'm effectively stuck with 4 usable volume levels, which really sucks.
I'm surprised that I really haven't heard others complaining about this - does everyone have volume knobs on their speakers, or their speakers just happened to be tuned right, or do people just not care about the lack of effective levels they have?

Anyway, sorry for choosing to word this issue in such a wordy manner, but, does anyone know a solution (which doesn't involve me having to buy new speakers)?
Thanks :P

I think this is solved if you double click the volume icon... not sure really, but I remember seeing something like that.

Referring to multiple options..

feinicks Wrote:I think this is solved if you double click the volume icon... not sure really, but I remember seeing something like that.

Referring to multiple options..

That doesn't really solve anything... >_>
The volume mixer still only has one control, except there's one for each application now (could do this in XP anyway).

Well yes, the volume control was more elaborate in XP, but honestly, most people have a a pair of speakers with knobs and, in case listening to music or watching movies or something, the application allows music control. I doubt that a vast majority bother to adjust the volume through the OS.

On the contrary, I'm fairly sure many Flash games do not offer a volume control, and many people use the OS volume control to control the Windows dings as well.

I managed to find a work around though.  Seems I can adjust different channel balances - since I have 2.0 speakers, I just lowered the balance to the front speakers.
Still not as good as XP, and still can't adjust SW Synth volume (hopes all my MIDI apps have a volume control - don't recall Sibelius having one), but I'll see how it goes.