Alternative gameplay Create a personalized Windows XP sound

When you turn on your computer and enter Windows, the computer will make some sound. If it is the standard installation method of Windows XP, the surround sound effect is emitted at startup. If it is Windows XP pre-installed by other vendors, it may be other sounds.

Windows not only makes a sound when it starts up. If you do something wrong, there will be a harsh chord. When the mail arrives, the mail program will emit a loud number. When you empty the Windows Recycle Bin, you will hear a sound that is discarded after the document is smashed.

Windows comes with a sound library that uses different sounds to prompt when different events occur. If these sounds upset you, such as the sudden chord sounds may give you the urge to throw your computer away from the fourth floor. Can you replace these noises with your favorite voice? Of course, the sounds triggered by these events can be changed. You can choose to turn them off directly, or you can use music downloaded from the Internet or even your own recorded sound instead.

For the sound settings, first open the sound scheme folder of the Windows Control Panel (see Figure 1). From the Start menu, choose Control Panel Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices. The screen then shows a list of three tasks. Select the second line "Change Sound Scheme". The Sound and Audio Device Properties window opens and appears on the Sounds tab.

At the bottom of the window, there will be a dialog box labeled "Program Events" that includes all Windows events that can specify a sound. An event that already has a sound connection will display a small speaker icon in front. Click on the event with the icon, the play button on the side below the “sound” will be activated, click to listen to the effect of the sound (see Figure 2). Take a look at the "Program Events" list and you'll notice that not all events have a triggering sound, mostly blank. Events that already have sound settings can also be modified at will.

These sounds are actually a single wav file saved on the hard drive, although these sound files can be saved anywhere on any drive, but by default they are all in "C: Under the WindowsMedia folder (see Figure 3). When you install a new application, it also loads some new sound files. If you look closely at the "Program Events" list, you will find those files that have been installed. But in general, these programs will put the sound files in their own folders instead of "C:WindowsMedia". This prevents the application from accidentally overwriting the sound of other programs. Click on the sound of an installed file to see the path to the file in the Sounds dialog.

develop a sound scheme

Although you can change the sound settings for a single event, but Windows there is a faster way to batch replace sound. Click on the "Sound Scheme" drop-down box and you will see multiple scenarios installed. There are only two options on my machine: Windows default and silent. But there may be more on your machine, just choose another one and you can change a whole set of sounds. If you want to add your own style of sound, you need to know more about these sound solutions.

Now that we know how Windows uses event sounds, let's examine how to change settings to suit your taste. Before making any changes, we recommend saving a set of sounds that are in use. If you are tired of new sound solutions in the future, you can quickly return to the existing solution (see Figure 4). Of course, you can also go directly to the Windows default program, but in any case, it is always a good habit to save the original solution, and the sound solution can not occupy the space of multiple optical hard disks.

with sound control panel can put any favorite sound files (stored in the hard disk anywhere) assigned to Windows in certain events. Click on the event you want to change, then click the "Browse" button next to it to open the file browser. You can now find and select any wav file on your hard drive. After selecting the file, you can also listen to it by pressing the play button next to "Preview" at the bottom left. If you are satisfied with the selection, click OK and the sound of the event is set (see Figure 5).

Some people may think that it is very interesting to use a star to be a mail reminder, but you will find that a long and repeated paragraph will quickly become annoying. The shorter the alarm sound, the better, otherwise the best things will be annoying for a long time. Except for the sound of Windows startup and exit, all other prompts should be as short as possible.

The easiest way to get sound is to download it from the Internet. There are a lot of free downloadable short wav files on the internet that are enough to pick you up. If you want to use a piece from a movie or TV series, http://funwavs.com is a good place. And www.wavcentral.com has more options and a wider range of options. Unfortunately, this is all MP3 format, so you have to use an audio conversion software to turn them into wav files before you can use them as system sounds. For example, Audacity, which can be downloaded from the following website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/windows.php (see Figure 6). As it involves MP3 files, you may also need to download the Lame MP3 codec from the following website: http://mitiok.free.fr.

After the download is complete, install Audacity. Then unpack the Lame package and extract the Lame.dll file into the Audacity home directory. When finished, start Audacity, press Ctrl+P, click on the “Formats” tab, and press the “Find Library” button. Finally, point Audacity to the Lame.dll file.

Sound Editing

Converting between MP3 files and wav files is as simple as opening the MP3 file you want to convert and then selecting "Export as wav" in the "File" menu. It's just a matter of saving.

Of course, you can also edit existing sound files with Audacity and even record a sound yourself. For example, you can open a ready-made sound file (such as chord.wav) in "C:WindowsMedia" and make some changes to it. Here are the specific steps.

Load this file into Audicity. Click on the "File" menu and select "Open". Then find the C:WindowsMedia folder and open the chord.wav file. Playing this file in Audacity, I heard a familiar sound. Next, we will use Audacity to turn it into a completely different style of sound.

First, press Ctrl+A to select the entire waveform H. In the Effect menu, select “Reverse.” Now playing this file, the sound effects are very different. We can also make it even more weird, still select this waveform all, select a “wahwah” effect from the “Effects” menu. In the pop-up window, increase “resonance” to 4, which will “ Increase the LFO frequency to 4 and set the Depth to 100%. Click OK. Now play again, you can hear some very strange effects.

Going on the next trick Before clicking the cursor at the end of the file, then select “Insert Silence” in the “Edit” menu. Enter the length for 3 seconds. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire file and select “Effects” menu. Echo" (Echo). The Delay time is set to 0.5, the Delay factor is set to 0.5, and the OK button is clicked. Now when you play again, you will hear the sound fade in first, and at the end it is strange. Echo. Save the file with a name such as chord2.wav and set it to an event on XP.

Of course, you can not only edit existing sound files with Audacity, but also pass the microphone or sound card. The sound input jack records the new sound. After the recording is completed, use the editing tool to cut it into the appropriate length, add some effects, save it in the C:WindowsMedia folder, and use it for various Windows events. In this way, you can also learn some basic audio editing functions by the way.

When you choose the sound for the system, remember that adding a flushing toilet to the recycle bin may only have five minutes of fresh energy. And there have been countless people who have done this. I hope that readers will have more ideas in this area after reading this article.