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The system beep, which I hear quite often while doing things at the (msysgit) bash command prompt in Windows, is set to a volume that is disproportionately louder than everything else coming out of my soundcard - which means that if I'm listening to other audio then the beep, when it happens, is painfully loud.

To be clear about exactly which sound I'm talking about, it's the simple clipped beep that you get if you hit Tab to autocomplete a filename at the command prompt and the file is not found. (Update: it seems this sound happens when SSH'd in to a remote server, but not when working locally).

Is there any way of globally setting its volume at all?

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    for your reference, windows doesn't use bash. – Russell Uhl Sep 9 '15 at 19:02
  • It doesn't use bash by default, but it's perfectly possible - and not unusual, if you use Git - to use bash on Windows (via msys). That's what I'm doing. I specified bash because that noise doesn't seem to happen at the Windows cmd command prompt (and I don't use the Windows command prompt anyway). – Nick F Sep 10 '15 at 11:21
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Yes and no.

First, make sure your System sounds are at an appropriate level in your audio mixer. Not the overall volume level, but the system sounds specifically.

Assuming it is, things get a little more difficult. You can actually change the system sounds to use any wav file you like. Look for Sounds in your control panel. Figure out where to change your system sounds (you haven't specified what version of windows you're on). The sound you're probably looking for is the "Default Beep", whose default sound is "Windows Ding". You can either change this file, or modify it in some way.

"In some way"....for example you could load it into an audio editing program like Audacity, run an amplifier on it (make sure you amplify by a negative amount), and then re-save your new file. Then just point that system sound to the new file.

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  • Thanks for the reply. The sound in question isn't "Windows Ding". It actually doesn't sound like a Windows sound at all (which are all quite "produced" wav sounds), but rather an old-school PC beep: a loud, clipped-off simple "beep" tone. ie. it sounds generated rather than a nice OS sound. Perhaps I should try to record it... – Nick F Sep 10 '15 at 11:34
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    Actually, having said that, the "System sounds" level does seem to alter it... D'oh! Could have sworn I'd tried that. It's odd because I couldn't find it in the list of sounds (Windows Ding, etc), and I'd love to be able to reduce the volume of that sound separately (or replace it / turn it off) because it is disproportionately loud. But that does at least solve the main problem of protecting my ears! – Nick F Sep 10 '15 at 11:38

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