If you recently moved to Windows 7 and went on your merry way, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard about some new audio enhancement settings that can dramatically improve your listening experience. This article will explain what they are and show you how to set them.
The audio enhancement settings are a collection of effects that let you do things like set your listening environment for places such as an auditorium, a concert hall, or even a sewer pipe. You can also mute vocals for karaoke, simulate surround sound, and much more.
To open your audio enhancement settings, do the following:
1. Select Start > Control Panel.
2. Click Hardware and Sound.
3. Click Sound. A Sound window will open and display your playback devices:
4. Select Speakers and click Properties.
5. A Speaker Properties window will open. Click the Enhancements tab:
You can now set your audio effects for anything you like by checking one of the boxes and using the Setting drop-down list. Here’s a quick explanation of what each of the enhancements does:
Environment allows you to set your playback to simulate 23 different outdoor and indoor environments.
Voice Cancellation mutes the vocals so that you can sing some karaoke.
Pitch Shift allows you to set the pitch 4 levels up or down.
Equalizer allows you to select preset equalizer settings to emulate 13 performance styles including party, classical, and jazz.
Virtual Surround encodes surround audio for stereo output.
Loudness Equalization normalizes volume differences to give you a more consistent sound level.
The Immediate mode checkbox simply applies your changes immediately rather than waiting for you to click the Apply button.
Now that you can turn your home into a concert hall or karaoke bar, you’ll probably find even fewer reasons to go outside. Aren’t you glad you read this?
Daniel Offer guest writes. Daniel owns the Facebook chat application Chit Chat for Facebook. The Facebook chat program ”Chit Chat” allows you to send Facebook messages from your desktop.