Have you ever had the problem that the sound volume of an application or game in Windows 7 was to high or to low? This happens to me quite often when I start games for the first time after installation. The music is often to loud, which can be especially troublesome if you are hanging out in voice chat with a few buddies at the same time.

If you cannot hear what your friends are saying, you know the sound of the game is to loud. Some applications and most games let you change the sound volume right in their preferences, while other’s do not offer these options. There may also be situations where an app or game is making annoying sounds that you want to mute completely.

One useful feature that Microsoft integrated into Windows 7 is the ability to control the sound volume per application, and not only globally or per sound output device.

A left-click on the volume icon in the system tray area still displays only the global sound control which you can use to change the volume of sounds for all apps and games that run on the system.

A right-click on the icon and the selection of Open Volume Mixer displays the global mixer and application specific mixers.

Here it is now possible to increase or decrease the sound volume of specific applications, or even mute them completely to block all sounds from that app automatically.

The global slider moves all other sliders in relation. If you increase the global sound for instance, all application specific volumes are moved by the same amount to their new positions.

I personally use the feature to mute specific applications completely, and reduce the sound of apps that have their volume set to loud by default.

Have you used the feature before? If so, for what purpose?