Music playback knocked out by other sounds

Hello, hope someone can help me!

I've recently started using Windows 7, and am having an annoying sound issue.

If I'm playing music or listening to an internet radio station either through Windows Media Player or through my internet browser, if I then get another sound come through in anything else eg. a sound effect from a game, email notification, Windows Messenger alert etc. it knocks the sound of the music down to about a quarter of what it originally was. The music volume then gradually recovers once it realises no other sounds are going to be made. It's as if it's giving priority to the other programs.

I don't want this to happen at all! I'd rather choose a low background volume for the music, which stays rock solid and doesn't get altered by anything else.

I've tried adjusting various settings both within the audio control panel in Windows (Realtek HD Audio Manager) and Windows Media Player, but without any luck. I've noticed the setting about Windows automatically adjusting volume if it detects communications activity, and tried changing it to "do nothing" but this has absolutely no effect. Game sound effects aren't communication activity anyway! I've also tried ticking and unticking the "Normalise Volume" check-boxes in my Realtek HD Audio Manager control panel, but this doesn't appear to do anything either.

Please can anyone help me with a way to stop the sound keep getting knocking out. It's so irritating I've stopped playing music through my PC all together when multi-tasking

Many thanks in advance for any help.
James.

If you don't want the System Sounds you can completely disable them in the Sound Panel. Change the Sound Scheme to "No Sounds". That is the way I have my PC setup as I also use my PC for my recording studio and I don't want anything interferring with recording.

Hi. Thanks for the reply, but I definitely still want all the system sounds to be heard whilst also playing music.

James.

I don't think you have any other choice - it's either one or the other.

Ah right ok. Is this just a "feature" of Windows 7 then, as I never had the same problem in Windows XP?

Thanks again for the advice,
James.

Just to let you know, someone on another forum suggested updating my Realtek drivers, and this has fixed the issue.

Well in fact I've just removed the old drivers, and I now have all my sounds working fine (presumably just using default Windows drivers?). So I'm not going to bother installing the newer drivers as everything appears to be working fine, and system sounds/alerts/notifications are no longer affecting my music :)

Thanks again anyway,
James.

Don't install a new driver if your current driver works fine. Some drivers may not be really meant for your specific hardware yet compatible with it but has certain features that your hardware does not support and may be a bit buggy compared to the default drivers.

Vertex said:

Don't install a new driver if your current driver works fine. Some drivers may not be really meant for your specific hardware yet compatible with it but has certain features that your hardware does not support and may be a bit buggy compared to the default drivers.

Yes will do, thanks. I think that's the case for me, as in the properties box before I uninstalled the Realtek driver I noticed it said my model was an ALC887, however that model number doesn't appear to be listed as being supported by the driver Latest Realtek HD Audio Driver Version

So I'll continue using the default driver, as it seems to be playing sounds perfectly, and without the issue I had before.

Cheers,
James.

jilawrence said:

So I'll continue using the default driver, as it seems to be playing sounds perfectly, and without the issue I had before.

Cheers,
James.

James, the the sound being lowered when another sound is present is actually, or at least supposed to be a feature.

If you had looked under playback devices you would have seen a tab named "Communication". The selections available change the way in which Windows handles multiple audiostreams.

ie:
-Reduce all other sounds by 80%
-Reduce all other sounds by 50%
-Do Nothing

If you had chosen Do Nothing sound would've remained constant.

Ap

Aphelion said:

jilawrence said:

So I'll continue using the default driver, as it seems to be playing sounds perfectly, and without the issue I had before.

Cheers,
James.

James, the the sound being lowered when another sound is present is actually, or at least supposed to be a feature.

If you had looked under playback devices you would have seen a tab named "Communication". The selections available change the way in which Windows handles multiple audiostreams.

ie:
-Reduce all other sounds by 80%
-Reduce all other sounds by 50%
-Do Nothing

If you had chosen Do Nothing sound would've remained constant.

Ap

Hi. No actually, as I explained in my original post, one of the first things I did was change it to "do nothing" but it didn't respond at all.

Cheers,
James.