Volume Mixer Improvements
Don't you hate it when you are listening to a great song and you get an IM at the same time and that stupid ding sound? Well, a feature you may have missed in Windows Vista that is still with us, thankfully, in Windows 7 is per-application volume control.
Click the Audio icon in the tray and open the mixer (see Figure 3.4). You will see sound adjustments for several devices. You can use a volume control slider to alter the sound for every running program that produces audio output. When the program is closed, its slider is removed from the mixer options. Even though you might close a program, the volume control will remember what settings you had for that application; therefore, the next time you open the same app, it has the same volume settings (which is great because it means you don't have to keep configuring sound each time).
Figure 3.4 Audio adjustment options.