Sound control panel Vs. monitors & sound?

[Syntho]

The Monitors & Sound control panel has a volume control inside of it. Fair enough. But there is also another little application in HD - Extras called Sound. It's here that I can select if I'm using an additional audio card, as well as adjust the output volume. I'm not sure what the difference is between the two.

The one in Monitors & Sound stays the same after rebooting, but the volume in the Sound app in the Extras folder is pegged all the way up every time I restart. I also find that the control strip's Sound panel is linked not to Monitors & Sound, but to the extra Sound app's volume. I have to turn it down every time I boot up or else I'll get clipping.

What is the difference between the two, and how can I get the one in the older Sound app to keep its volume setting?

 

[nglevin]

"Monitors and Sound" is the newer control panel that showed up in the later releases of Mac OS 7, definitely 7.6 and maybe a later release of 7.5.x. I believe this was associated with the release of a line of Apple monitors that integrated speakers with the CRT and that's why it requires a SystemAV extension to work at all, but I'm hazy on the details.

"Sound" and "Monitors" date back to the earlier years of System 7, but received updates through 8.1 as one of the Extras, as you've observed.

Some third party Mac OS extensions added options to the earlier control panels but not "Monitors and Sound", and some settings like display profiles for ColorSync can only be set through "Monitors and Sound". That's how you can get in a situation where you'll need all three control panels, even though there's obvious overlap between the three. One typical example would be drivers for NuBus era hardware that largely predated System 7.5.

Basically if you don't need the Sound control panel, and you probably don't on a PowerPC Mac, set that control panel to "Disabled" via Extensions Manager or just move that out of the Control Panels folder to someplace else. Don't confuse yourself.

 

[Syntho]

So Sound, and Monitors, then they combined them into Sound & Monitors totaling 3 different ones?

I'm running an audio interface and I'm required to use the Sound control panel located in the Extras folder. It's the only way to select it and get system audio running through it. If I remove that, my audio interface probably won't work. I just checked on another machine with only built in sound and the Sound (extras) control panel, and the Monitors & Sound control panel both change the volume. However, on my system running an audio interface, Monitors & Sound's volume slider does not affect volume at all, and only the Sound (extras) control panel changes the volume of my audio interface.

I would be satisfied with that, but the old Sound control panel saves the volume setting for the built-in output, but it does NOT save it for my audio interface. It resets every time. I actually found a near 20-year-old forum post a few minutes ago that has the same complaint. If I could find a workaround for getting the volume to save, or somehow change automatically when I boot up, that would be killer.

 

[LaPorta]

If I recall...the Sound app was what you could use to record new system sounds. Monitors and Sound didn’t do that in that version.

 

[Syntho]

Let me get in a bonus question: I've always wanted to be able to control the volume from a couple keys like I can on my Mac Pro keyboards. I don't think the F keys are in use on a Mac by default, but correct me if I'm wrong. Is there any way to set that up without having to install some keyboard shortcut software?

 

[nglevin]

Functional Keys does exactly what you describe, to answer your bonus questioning. It's still actively developed and only available on the Macintosh Garden as freeware.

Not sure how to get around your Sound control panel problem. If it's a problem with the driver not writing out the volume of the device to a preferences file, that might only be something that can be resolved by finding an updated version that (hopefully) solves your troubles.

 

[Syntho]

There will never be more updates for the driver. Perhaps I can hack the file though...