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A side-project I'm working on has to use sound, and during this I realized that at my usual sound level, (about 20-25%), it sounds great too me, but one tester, who tested at his normal volume said it was painfully loud compared to his "default", (50%), and another said said the same (40%).

So then I wanted to find some data, but Microsoft don't appear to display usage statistics like that, (which is odd, seeing that what settings is the most common is really useful for developers).

anyone have any ideas, perhaps what the "industry standard" is?

(commenting your "default range" would be useful too)

Thanks!

What I have tried:

Googled and only got a lot information on how to set it through task sequence and policy/registry-hacks
Posted
Updated 19-Jul-18 0:02am
v2

1 solution

Don't touch the volume control. It is up to the user to select that. Doing it by your appplication will also not work as expected if the user has speakers with their own volume control.

If your sounds are too loud, they are probably bad leveled. You can use an audio editor like Audacity to adjust the level of your sound files. But this does not help for overdriven sound files. These must be recreated (recorded again). To check this, there should be no peaks reaching the limit (0 dB) when displayed in an audio editor. A common setting is that the max. peak(s) should be in the range of -12 to -6 dB.

If an audio consists of rather uniform sounds (like a permanent tone or a series of such with only short gaps), these are sensed louder than other sounds played at the same volume level. For such sounds the gain can be reduced.
 
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Comments
Frank R. Haugen 19-Jul-18 6:14am    
Agreed! Any fiddling with OS volume can only lead to disaster.

But I was more after what level I should set my audio settings at while testing and leveling audio files.
Jochen Arndt 19-Jul-18 6:34am    
For testing you use the "normal" volume setting as already done.

For leveling do what I have suggested:
Use -12 to -6 dB or less for monotone sounds (that was the word I was looking for but it did not came to my mind while posting). Play with the gain in the audio editor until you and other testers think it sounds equally loud to other sounds.

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