Pretty much this. I love Windows 7 individual application control and how you can enable a device to have exclusive control of the audio endpoint in question and run things to different audio points. Makes it more versital. This feature started in Windows Vista. One of the best user envoirment audio sub systems in the Windows family. The only thing I don't like is removal of 3D Direct Sound Acceration which allowed EAX to work without the need of special drivers and such in games that supported it *only thing that was great about XP's audio handling* Windows 9X allowed you to have different real time MIDI software synthesizers that weren't crap, and didn't force Microsoft's synthesizer down your throat.
Windows 7 can automatically lower the volume of other programs if it detects commincations activity. I've never tried it out and not sure if it started in Vista. But you can try this as well.
Side note: if you run application that has exclusive control of your audio endpoint in Vista or higher, Fusion will not work until you enable alternate timing or route direct sound to a different endpoint by changing the default device. Just a heads up the applications uses the sound hardware to sync itself up. So just use direct sound if want them both mixed on the same endpoint (which means you can use regular timing instead of alternate). Also CPU usage should be kept in mind.
As for XP or lower, you could try seeing what your sound card driver supports (I know one OEM card I had for Windows 98 Second Edition had an other tap that let you control the mixing of different sounds, but it was numbered from 1 to 32, was called Conxent RipTide or something) or routing skype to use a different sound card because XP broadcasts it's audio to all endpoints. Although it's not recommended to have multiple sound cards on one computer because the chance of conflicts and degraded sound quality.
This post has been edited by Chibisteven: 09 September 2013 - 07:37 PM
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