How to keep Winamp from changing your mixer's wave volume control setting...

[FlyingPenguin]

By default Winamp uses the default Wave device but the problem with this is that when you move the volume slider in Winamp, you're actually changing your sound card's Wave channel volume. Quite annoying - you'll listen to some music then fire up a game and find your game volume is totally different from the last time you played - and you have to exit to the desktop to fix it.

Anyway, on SBLive cards (this will probably work with others) you can set Winamp to adjust it's volume without tampering with the mixer.

Make sure you have the latest version of Winamp and install it with the Nullsoft Directsound Plugin (it's installed by defualt):

Click on the upper left corner of the Winamp player, select options and then preferences.

Under "Plug-Ins" click on "Output" then highlight "Nullsoft Directsound plug-in" on the right and click on Configure button.

Under "Directsound output device" change this from "Primary Sound Driver" to "SB Live! Wave Device". Click OK.

That's it!

[Executioner]

I don't have a SB Live, instead, I have a SB AWE32, and I was able to do the same thing except for the part on

Under "Directsound output device" change this from "Primary Sound Driver" to "SB Live! Wave Device". Click OK.

When I clicked on configure, I had a small window where I could adjust block size and buffer.

Thanks for the tip!

[FlyingPenguin]

bump!

[poop]

Though I have not done any comparisons myself, I have heard from others that the directsound output is lower quality than the wave output.

I think the output sound's measurable specs are identical. Both outputs are 44.1 kHz, 16 bit , but I think the directsound stream is supposed to not sound as good to the listener.b

[FlyingPenguin]

Just the opposite is what I've noticed.

On Wave Device I get an annoying crackle every time pause, start or skip an MP3 in Winamp - don't get that with DirectSound.