I think the answer to your question is in the following post:

Re: indirect sound

Not all games control CD audio volume the same way your examples do. But I guess it's more universal. The other way requires analog audio cable. Such setups are probably found only in really old computers.

Windows XP is not that great neither. On my PC, it only reports one device for playing CD audio through MCI, even though I have two.

UCyborg wrote:

I think the answer to your question is in the following post: […]
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I think the answer to your question is in the following post:

Re: indirect sound

Not all games control CD audio volume the same way your examples do. But I guess it's more universal. The other way requires analog audio cable. Such setups are probably found only in really old computers.

Windows XP is not that great neither. On my PC, it only reports one device for playing CD audio through MCI, even though I have two.

Thanks for the reply. What is the guy meaning by "The only solution to this problem is using Windows XP compatibility mode/HardwareAudioMixer compatibility shim. This way the application can access the real mixer topology of the sound hardware." Where and how do I set this ?

Right-click on the shortcut you use to run the game->Properties->Compatibility tab->check Run this program in Compatibility mode for and select Windows XP (Service Pack 3).

Hope it works. Can't really tell since I don't have any game exhibiting the behavior you describe.

UCyborg wrote:

Right-click on the shortcut you use to run the game->Properties->Compatibility tab->check Run this program in Compatibility mode for and select Windows XP (Service Pack 3).

Hope it works. Can't really tell since I don't have any game exhibiting the behavior you describe.

Oh, I though it was something different. Surprisingly this fixed the issue in the game where sounds would go silent. It however didn't have effect on another game and the third one I tested might just have completely broken music volume setting (it didn't work on 7, XP or 98) or it might be a problem with Realtek sound cards that both of my computers have.

Do you have analog audio cable going from the optical drive to the sound card? Third one might be attempting to change the volume of optical drive's analog audio output, which doesn't work if it doesn't exist.

UCyborg wrote:

Do you have analog audio cable going from the optical drive to the sound card?

Not on modern hardware.

See, that's the thing...you can't control CD volume in games that expect ancient hardware setup, not without one of those WinMM wrappers emulating virtual CD audio, which play music from disk (have to rip it from CD first, obviously). DxWnd also has such option.

UCyborg wrote:

Do you have analog audio cable going from the optical drive to the sound card? Third one might be attempting to change the volume of optical drive's analog audio output, which doesn't work if it doesn't exist.

No. Now that you mention it I remember on my old computer from 1999 (which I unfortunately threw away) the CD drive had volume controls on it. That one might have been what you describe.

antrad wrote:

No. Now that you mention it I remember on my old computer from 1999 (which I unfortunately threw away) the CD drive had volume controls on it. That one might have been what you describe.

That's for the headphone jack volume. Traditionally you had that, an open/close/stop button, and a play/track button which played CD audio to the card via cable and to the jack; pressing the button again went to the next track. It's software independent.

But the same cable is necessary for a game that plays its music from a CD in real time. For instance COLONIZATION does that; it shuffles tracks and plays specific ones for in game events, or you can hijack that with the play button (which plays tracks sequentially).

As for the analog output volume, that's controlled by software only. Hopefully Windows 7 is hiding the CD sound in a mixed channel, sounds like you already looked at that.

It seems that simply using Windows XP compatibility was not a complete fix. The CD music does not increase/decrease the volume of other sounds, it now plays at maximum, in game volume controls have no effect. Also sometimes CD music doesn't play or gets stuck, though I only played one level with this, so this part might be level specific. I forgot to mention the game is Gunlok.

UCyborg wrote:

Windows XP is not that great neither. On my PC, it only reports one device for playing CD audio through MCI, even though I have two.

I figured MCI merely tells you there's one "MCI driver" for handling CD Audio (mcicda.dll), not the actual number of CD drives.

Some audio card drivers apparently add CD Audio control, see this.

I tried NirSofer's Volumouse, ran it in XP compatibility mode, that did make CD Audio appear in a Component dropdown menu, though it was impossible actually change it. I don't know if special drivers would change anything. I used to have VIA's drivers on Windows 7, but I don't remember if there was anything for CD volume specifically added. Another thing that may appear there under certain circumstances (analog audio cable?) is CD Player, see this.

The biggest issue is that MCI that old games often use doesn't expose any volume controls, so they have to set it through other means. Most software don't have problems, AFAIK they read audio data themselves and send it through some sound API for playback, where volume control is not an issue.