The Three Volume Conundrum

[Jay 37,363]

When I'm sitting down at my computer and listening to music, I often find that I have 3 separate volumes to deal with, and I never know which one to do what with.

 

There's the Volume within the app playing the music (WinAmp, Spotify, MusicBee, etc)

 

The volume for my computer itself (which I have a nice knob on my keyboard that controls)

 

And the volume on my actual speakers, which I have to reach forward to control

 

Anybody else have this same issue?

Which volume(s) to I leave at max?  Or 80%? Or some other value?  Which one do I make be the "primary" one I use when I need to adjust the volume?  The in-app one because my hand is already using the mouse?  On the on-keyboard one because it's closer?  The on-speakers one because it's the final destination?

 

Discuss!

[Holko 9,526]

My headphone volume is at max because the wheel is kinds broken, my app volume is at max because i don't like pulling sliders left to right, I control the computer volume with the keyboard, fn+left/right because it seems convenient. Oh, you forgot the volume mixer where you can change running software's volume independently from each other!

[Jay 37,363]

OMG YOU'RE RIGHT I HAVE FOUR VOLUMES TO DEAL WITH

[Thor 7,504]

I never mess with the iTunes volume control on my computer. It's set to max.

 

My amplifier volume is set to about 1/4th, which means that it usually gets loud enough if computer audio is 100%. So I usually only toggle the computer audio up and down. Some albums are mixed low, and so are movies, so occasionally I need to adjust the amplifier volume too, but those are the exceptions.

 

I don't use headphones, and I never listen to music on my phone (my phone is for phoning).

[mstrox 6,651]

I play all of my music through an iPhone, either through headphones (without their own volume control) or through a small bluetooth speaker.  I adjust as needed for headphones.  For the speaker, I keep it at about half volume, and adjust the bluetooth speaker's volume as needed.  I used to keep the phone at full volume for that purpose, but Apple added some weird volume limiting thing that you can't disable, which pops up and says "you've been listening to music too loudly" and adjusts your volume down to the halfway point.

[bruce marshall 1,315]

First World problems! 😎

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

My music runs through a Raspberry Pi with DAC extension, though it doesn't actually use the converter of the DAC but feeds the digital stream directly into the amp. The point of the extension is that it allows bit-perfect passthrough of the original stream at all the standard frequencies and sampling rates. Bit-perfect also means that the amplitude of the stream isn't changed, i.e. I don't have to worry about the volume control in the playback software because it doesn't do anything anyway. The only volume control for the music is the amp itself.

 

For computer sound, I have it hooked up to the same amp and to a Logitech bluetooth stereo+subwoofer set. Depending on whether I want quality or play sounds/notifications while listening to the music, I'll choose one or the other. It's usually a random mix of the various volume controls, because for non-music stuff it doesn't matter much anyway (when I watch videos, I make sure to max out one of the software volumes and then adjust the other one as needed, but I usually prefer watching video stuff on the TV anyway).

 

The most annoying thing is that the Logitech set has a standalone volume control knob with a little on/off switch on the side, and that's on my desk beneath the monitor and usually buried in whatever piles up on my desk, so I have to dig it out to turn it on or off, which invariably also causes me to turn the volume dial a bit. Which is why I sometimes just leave it running for a few days and activate/deactivate the BT connection on my PC as needed, but I'm not a fan of having devices turned on when I don't need them.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,892]

OCD prohibits me from adjusting my physical speaker volume. I adjust the volume in whatever application I'm using 95% of the time, about ~5% of the time I adjust the system volume, which can be adjusted on my keyboard as well.

[Jurassic Shark 12,075]

Each volume control is related to an amp. As a rule of thumb, the more expensive the amp, the more noise it introduces to the signal. So when the signal is going through a chain of several amps, one should have a low volume on the cheaper amps and a high volume on the more expensive amps in the chain.

 

Furthermore, if the chain contains two amps in similar price range, it could be beneficial to have them at about the same volume level since the noise can increase faster than linearity as a function of volume level.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

??

[TSMefford 1,509]

Honestly. It switches back and forth all the time depending on what I'm doing with basically no consistency whatsoever.

 

Sometimes I adjust in iTunes, sometimes I adjust my speaker, other times I do it down in the volume mixer. I'm a mess. I try my best to keep my speaker where it's at a good average for everything, but am almost never successful. 

 

Granted sometimes I'm going back and forth between cutting individual Sound Effects, TV Promos, Composing My Own Music, Editing my own versions of Scores, etc. etc. etc. so I imagine that contributes to the chaos.