Customise sound settings to get better audio

There used to be a time when the only sound a computer could produce was the occasional negative-sounding bleep whenever you inadvertently pressed the wrong key. Nowadays, virtually every PC can produce rich, high-fidelity audio, and most can record sound too.

But are you making the most of your computer’s audio abilities? Both Windows XP and Windows Vista include a number of lesser-known settings that can be used to help improve sound quality, fix problems and generally customise the way in which your PC records or plays back music, speech and film soundtracks.

In this feature, we’ll explore all these and more, helping your PC to sound better than ever. Even the most basic PCs include audio hardware of some kind and this is usually referred to as a soundcard. Most modern computers have motherboards that come with built-in audio circuitry as standard; this is known as onboard or integrated audio.

High-end gaming and media PCs usually come with dedicated soundcards that slot into the motherboard and offer higher quality or surround-sound audio settings. Dedicated soundcards often include a wider range of input and output sockets for connecting playback devices, such as speakers or surround-sound amplifiers, and recording sources such as microphones and line-in inputs.

It’s easy to upgrade from onboard sound to a dedicated soundcard, but sound quality from computers with onboard audio is, these days, good enough for most purposes.

The obvious thing to say about the hardware side of things is that you should always make sure all external audio accessories – microphones, speakers and any other inputs or outputs – are physically connected to the correct sockets on your PC.

As a general rule, computer sound sockets are colour-coded: pink is for the microphone; green is for audio-output (speakers); and blue is for analogue input (line-in). Some sound sockets are labelled with small symbols instead of colours.

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A small piece of software called a driver allows soundcards to be used by and controlled within Windows. It’s important to make sure your driver is up to date and functioning correctly. Some sound hardware comes with its own control software, but most audio devices can be controlled effectively using the tools built into Windows.

The most basic audio setting of all is volume. You probably have a volume knob on your speakers, but this just controls the volume setting of the speakers themselves. It’s possible to alter your computer’s volume settings via Windows too.

The easiest way to do so is via the loudspeaker icon in the Windows Notification Area (in the bottom-right of your screen). Simply click it, then raise or lower the slider to raise or lower volume. A ‘Mute’ option is also available here.

In Windows Vista, the loudspeaker Notification Area icon is usually displayed by default. If it isn’t, simply right-click in an empty space in the Notification Area and select Properties, then make sure there’s a tick next to Volume and click OK.

In Windows XP, the loudspeaker icon isn’t always present in the Notification tray, but it’s easy to add if it’s not there. Click Start, then Control Panel, then Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices, and click on the Sound and Audio Devices icon. In Volume tab of the dialogue box that opens, put a tick next to ‘Place volume icon in the taskbar’ and click OK.

Depending on the driver that came with your sound hardware, there may be a different volume icon, made by the soundcard company, instead of, or as well as, the Windows one on the Notification Area. The functions provided by these utilities can vary, so refer to the instructions or help files that came with your PC or sound hardware for more.