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Comment by adnrw | Hacker News Reader

I may be misremembering, but I have a feeling the per-app volume mixer was available all the way back in Windows XP. Possibly sound-card dependent?

An app called Jack OS X does the job on Mac: http://www.jackosx.com/

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Per app volume control arrived in Vista. Previously you had a single master volume control in the notification area which if you double clicked would open the sound mixer control panel.

That panel on XP (and before) only permitted per-device volume control.

For reference see [1] at around 04:00 and Larry Osterman's posts from September and December 2005 [2][3].

[1]: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/scobleizer/Steve-Ball-Learnin...

[2]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/09/19/471...

[3]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/12/15/504...

JACK is a huge amount more than just a per-app volume mixer, it's basically a virtual audio cabling system. Very handy if you've ever had a need to pipe audio between applications or manipulate audio streams from arbitrary apps.

It's also a complete pain in the arse to get running on Linux, due to the ALSA+Pulse stack being in the way.

If your goal is to use Linux for audio production (or some other use case where JACK would be necessary), it helps to use a distro like Musix or Ubuntu Studio that already takes care of that "get running" part for you.

JACK is pretty complex, but infinitely useful; one of those things I end up installing long before I decide I actually need it.

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