System sounds are very low

[AnnJ]

Hi Jacee,
Read the thread and while it's good to see I'm not alone with this issue, I wish those remedies would help me too.
I had the setting on 16 bit 48000 Hz DVD quality and tried the CD setting 44100 Hz just now... still no luck.

Of curiousity, when I test the different Hz levels, the sound volume meter flies to the top (100)! When I test the individual Windows sounds, the meter goes to 5-10% and barely audible. If I play solitaire, spider etc... you cannot hear the cards being shuffled or the fireworks when you win! When Windows opens, you can barely hear the opening wav file.
Thanks for your post. I'm stymied over this and appreciate your help.

Ann

 

[PhailPhish]

So yeah, I'm not sure if you've fixed your problem yet. But I just came across the same problem with low system sounds ect.

What I did was, I clicked the sound icon, in the processbar, and chose "Mixer".
From there, I clicked the dropdown menu, under the main audio bar from where I could see that I had two of the same speakers (twice my computerspeaker so to say).

I went into my control panel, chose "Hardware and Sound" and then clicked "Administrate audio devices". From there, I deactivated the "speakers" causing low sound and made the other one my standard audio device.


I hope it helps, if you haven't already solved your problem.

~PhailPhish

 

[FreshFruit77]

My two cents...

Hi there,

I have the same problem and one thing I have noticed in this thread is that we all (or most) seem to have HDMI output for which we would have a related HDMI audio driver. I suggest that maybe we have all attached our laptops or computers to a TV or other HDMI output device (for example, to watch a movie). When you output your laptop to a TV the systems sounds are typically very loud because our stereo/receiver is set up on high volume to watch a video. In order to do this, we would have had to change the playback device (right-click volume icon in tray and select playback devices). In response to the loud volume (DING!) of the Windows system sounds, we adjusted the System Sounds in the mixer for the HDMI output device (ie. realtek, sony, etc.). After we disconnect the HDMI cable and return to our speaker outputs, the lower system sounds applied while attached HDMI have been retained with our speakers. I presume the fix would be to reconnect the HDMI device, increase the system sounds through the mixer, then disconnect the HDMI device. I have yet to try this out, but perhaps it may help others. I will try and return with results. For those that cannot reconnect for some reason, I would suggest uninstall and re-install of video card drivers if you have a vid card with HDMI output.

Update: I tried this out and there was no fix. Presumably there is a default registry value for system sounds - perhaps someone can help us out?

 

[FreshFruit77]

Similar problem noted here...

Help System Sounds Are Too Low - Microsoft Community

 

[FreshFruit77]

Solution

Hi all,

The problem appears to be that the .wav files located in C:\Windows\Media folder have very low volumes in the files themselves. If you were to load the .wav file into a WAV editor you would see that the volume is very low. Furthermore, if you were to redirect to the system sound (i.e. Windows Battery Low.wav) by browsing to a new location with a different .wav that did not have the volume minimized you would see the volume slider increase. Possible suggestions - (1) redirect the system sounds to a custom location and custom .wav file, or (2) copy all the windows .wav files into a new directory/folder, edit all the volumes with a wave editor, and redirect all the system sounds to those new locations. Hoping to link my "low battery level" to the BeeGees - "Staying Alive". (Thank you kato for the help). Take care all.