One thing that really annoys me about linux media players is that they adjust the system volume and not their own volume. For instence, I may want to play a movie in mplayer at very low volume while I continue to listen to music, etc at normal volume. Or I might even want to play two movies at the same time, one on mute and the other at normal volume. In windows when I adjust the volume in a program, it's only for that program. Is there any way to do that in linux?

That would be program specific in Linux or Windows. I have not really seen what your talking about. I have seen programs that will adjust some volume control other than the master volume like the wave volume. That would also lower the volume for any other wave playing.

Winamp on PC can turn down it's volume, while you could be playing MP3's in media player simutaniously and see no change in volume in media player.

That is what the poster is talking about.

I believe that this is part of the programmers decision on Linux and Windows.

Programs that have their own volume, basically have their own 'buffer' for the sound, and they apply a noise filter to it to lower or increase the volume sent to the system, although the system could be at full blast. Basically controlling how loud the volume is before it's sent to the system.

Not all programmers choose to do this, because that's more code for them, having to code their own buffer, rather than use API straight to the system. Perhaps no linux applications do it because linux programmers are lazier? I don't know. But it is possible in linux.

Q: Is there any way to do that in linux?
A: Yes, if you want to get the source to application you want to do it to, make modifications to it's source code adding such a buffer, and compile it. Please start a website with your mods to the code so others can benfit too, if you decide to do this!

Actually Winamp adjusts the wave volume on my Windows system. The EQ Preamp will adjust the sound output without changing the volumes in Winamp just as Xmms does in Linux.

Every windows program that I can remember using changes only the program's sound. Will, with the exception of windows media player 9. But WMP6.4, winamp, powerdvd, pretty much everything else is volume independant, so I assumed that it was a difference in the windows volume API. Didn't know the programmers had to do it themselves. Oh well. Maybe I'll look into adding that feature to a couple linux apps if I get the time. Thanks guys.

i don't know that much about this but the answer if not now in the future is the jack sound server.
rhythmbox and alsaplayer have their own volume
and there is a jack server plugin for xmms so one would assume it can be controlled with jackmix or jackEQ
and the latest mplayer compiles with jack audio output support also
beyond jack aware apps (like hopefully they will all be in the future)
if you can isolate the output as a capture then that can be controlled by jack then sent to out i think.
before alsa and dmix and fast and multiple cpus there was no sound polling in linux so two sound streams got all screwed up anyway
so yes i agree with you legacy apps should be fixed
and they are being

It does appear that the behavior is different in WinMe than it is in WinXP.

Or maybe it the driver.