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[pwantzel]

When I try to change the volume in theatre view, either with the mouse or Media Center Remote, nothing happens.  When I press the down arrow on the remote (to access the various options) I see -99% for the volume setting.  This works fine in MC14

Version 15.0.16.

[Mr ChriZ]

It's working here same build.
Does it work in standard view?
My guess is your volume control is setting the wrong volume.  From Standard view you can chose this by pressing the volume button, and switching between internal, System, and Application.

[pwantzel]

No, not in standard view either.

I clicked the volume button.  There were two choices, neither checked, for System and Internal.  Checking either of these made the volume control work again.  What does each of these mean?  Which is the right one to check?

[jeh14]

"System" means the MC volume slider turns your sound card's master volume "knob." If you look at the Windows mixer while you're adjusting the MC volume slider you'll see the left most slider in the Windows mixer, the one labeled "speakers" or similar, go up and down under MC's command.

If set to "system" the MC volume slider will affect the volume of everything played back through that card by any and all apps. This is not the case for the following options:

"Internal" means MC does arithmetic on the outbound samples to control the volume before they ever get to the sound card. For example (and possibly oversimplified), if set to 50% volume, all the outbound samples would be multiplied by 0.5.  

On Vista and 7, at least with some audio output modes, there is a third option, "Application". These OSs provide an app-specific volume control implemented by the Windows sound subsystem rather than in the app or in the sound card driver. Essentially it's the same thing as "internal" but the arithmetic is being done by Windows-provided code instead of in MC. In Vista and 7 you'll notice the mixer applet has a slider for each app that has opened the sound card, and manipulating MC's slider in this mode will cause the corresponding slider in the Windows mixer applet to move, and vice-versa. (this doesn't seem to have any affect on MC's volume in my system, even though the slider moves just fine...)

Note that the "system" option is done with the same sort of arithmetic. With a very simple sound card or onboard chip it might be done in the sound card's driver. With a fancier sound card the driver sends commands to DSP hardware on the card to tell the DSP how much to scale the samples. But it's just scaling the values of the samples, no matter where it happens... one of the simplest of all DSP manipulations.

Thank you for asking the question. I was looking for where MC had put this option, as it isn't in the usual tools | options. Click the "mute" button in the main MC window, that's where! With MC you have to try clicking on just about everything!