Hello,

I have a 1998 jaguar with a Harmon Karman (sp) stereo system with cassette and CD player.  I want to use my ipod so I purchased a cassette adapter.  It works great but my question is…my Ipod id digital music, is it still digital playing through my speakers with the cassette adapter?

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Recently, I bought some nice in-ear headphones: the Klipsch Custom-2 In-Ear Noise Isolating Earphone. They do a great job of eliminating outside noise because they fit in my ears like earplugs. Here’s the downside to that: I discovered that my main computer, a Dell Latitude D820 (yeah, I’m using a 4-year-old computer, what of it?!), has a low, constant hiss whenever the sound isn’t muted.

When I plug the headphones into my iPhone, there’s no background noise–just perfect silence.

So, I went searching for a solution to the problem. Turns out, it’s not a software update or a configuration problem. I just have a cheap sound card. All sound cards introduce some level of noise (though my iPhone doesn’t seem to) and cheaper sound cards introduce more noise than better-quality sound cards.  Being a laptop, my computer has the sound card built into the motherboard, which makes it prone to this type of background noise.

If this were a desktop, I could simply add a better-quality sound card and plug my headphones or speakers into it. With a laptop/notebook/mobile computer, I need to add an external sound card or USB headphones (as described later). Check the reviews–some are better quality than others.

This problem also extended to recording. I regularly record voice-overs for instructional videos, and I had a seemingly incurable problem with background noise. When I bought a digital microphone (which uses a USB connection rather than the mic-in port), the background noise disappeared. Because I wasn’t using the analog microphone port on my laptop anymore, it wasn’t subject to the motherboard-induced background noise. The headset I bought also had headphones, and those headphones were immune to the background noise, too.

Moral of the story: if you hear noise when you plug a mic, headphones, or speakers into your computer, use a USB connection instead of the built-in analog connection.

Question:

Hey VistaClues.

I am looking for some way to make a keyboard shortcut for the volume control (Volume Mixer) so I can have fewer taskbar icons, but still have easy acces to the various things.

I’m also looking for a volume control tool, for the side bar menu.

In other words, a gadget that can control the master volume on the speakers (and microphone if possible).

Can you help me with the one, the other or both problems?

Thanks for all the help from your site.

Answer:

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I don’t think rebooting your computer warrants a lot of fanfare. To turn off that startup sound, follow these steps:

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Audophiles, prepare to cringe.

Windows Vista includes Bass Boost which increases the volume of low sounds (you know, like that switch that was on every 80’s walkman and boom box) and Virtual Surround, which varies the timing of the left and right channels to sorta make it sounds like you have more speakers.

To enable Bass Boost and/or Virtual Surround, follow these steps:

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This happens to me all the time–I turn the volume on my computer way up to listen to something. Later, someone instant messages me, and the ringing instant message sound is so loud my neighbors can hear it.

Some apps, like Windows Media Player, include their own volume control–but most don’t. Fortunately, Windows Vista makes up for this shortcoming. To adjust volume for individual applications, follow these steps:

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I love that search box in the upper-right corner of Explorer windows (you know, Documents, Pictures, etc). Of course, you can type in it to find files by their name or contents, but you can also search by date or several other criteria using Advanced Query Search (AQS).

Let’s say I want to find pictures taken on New Year’s Eve, 2006. I’ll type date:december31, 2006 and press Enter. Windows Vista immediately shows all my files modified on that date.

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