my manual for my 6360 says to set the original mac control panel audio control at halfway between 0 and max, and use the media reader volume as your control slide.
a friend who was an audio whiz set up my home steroe like this for us once. we had two amplifiers chained, and he set the first one at 0 and taped the slide in place, and told us never to adjust that one, that it had to be set lowest. he told us to use the second volume control to adjust the volume to our liking. he said that each control notch increased the volume Db by a factor multiplier of 10, and that our speakers could only handle up to a certain max. if we tried to push the power and volume beyond that, it would blow out our speakers permanently. so by setting the original amp to its lowest, he could be sure that only the range on the second would be operating on the speakers, and we couldn't turn the volume up higher than we meant to. he made me understand that in effect,he was setting the first control to 1. 10x0=1. if we turned the second control up to notch 2, that meant we were increasing the power from 10x0[=1] to 10x1[=10] to 10x10, =100 db. human hearing is only comfortable up to the low 100's. it gets painful very quickly above 120, 130,and so forth. and acoustics being radiant, like candlepower, the force drops exponentially as you get further away from the source, so to raise the volume you have to increase in all directions, like a sphere inflating, to satisfy your ears' perception of 'bigger' sound. that's why it's called 'volume' and not just something linear like 'height' . It has to grow in all directions to fill the space acoustically to the point you want to hear it. back to the two amplifiers chained.: moving the second control to notch 3 would be 10to the thrid power, ie, 1000db.!!!!! and if someone went back and moved the first control up one notch, that would be ten to the fourth power, ie, 10,000 db!!!!!!!!! then a second notch, and it goes to 100,000 db. now, you might want that kind of power if you were setting up an arena to broadcast a rock concert the size of woodstock, but your little home steroe speakers surely aren't gonna be able to handle volume like that. so you see why he permanently set the first amp to 0 and told us never to move it. translating this to your unhappy volume level between your innate sound control on the mac, and the additional sound control on the media system, you could have done one of two things: either setting both controls at max unwittingly blew out your speakers early on, by pushing them by several powers of ten too high, or--you have crappy little inadequate speakers, and maybe you should look into externally independently powered speakers you can plug into a sound jack on one of the devices? you probably should have set the mac's sound level at midrange halfway or lower, or even at zero to begin with, and tried just the media controls. to elevate the volume to a pleasing level. if you do try externally powered speakers, remember to set the first amplifier the sound goes thru,[ the mac sound control panel] to its lowest. and if these speakers are gonna amplify the sound, set the media controls down low at zero to begin with, too. remember: every notch upwards on the controls multipies the power of the sound by a POWER of ten. think of the chained amps, 1, 2 and 3, as controlling the gross, medium and fine raising of the volume. like gears: giant, medium, and tiny. if you turn the giant gear one notch, it will turn the middle gear quite far, and the tiny one, it will spin madly and may even break it., you would much rather turn the tiny gear to mediate the level for your human ear. so set everything at 0 to begin with, and try the outermost control on the externally powered speakers first, up to its max. if you're happy in that range, then never touch the first two controls. if you arent happy with 0 thru max on the outermost, reset them [the independently powere speakers] back down to 0, and try moving the middle control [ the media control panel] up from zero to ONE, and then ttry your outer control on the speakers themselves, -slowly- from 0, up. you have boosted every level on the outermost [speakers own] control now, by a power of ten, by changing the middle control, so don't go fast. when you tried the first range on the speaker's own outer control, you were getting 12345. now youre getting 10,20,30,40,50. if you get to the end, level of 10 on the speakers themselves,, you're really getting 100 [10x10] REMEMBER TO TURN BACK TO ZERO on the speakers control BEFORE TRYING ANOTHER NOTCH UP on the media controls panel!!!!! IF YOU FORGET TO TURN THE TINY ONE BACK TO ZERO AND TURN THE MIDDLE ONE UP ONE NOTCH, WHATEVER YOU LEFT THE TINY ONE ON IS GOING TO COME OUT INSTANTLY AT 100 TIMES THE LAST VOLUME. SPEAKER BLOWN, WIRES FRIED, PFFFFT. ALWAYS RESET THE TINY ONE, THE OUTERMOST ONE, TO ZERO, BEFORE RAISING THE MIDDLE ONE . ONE NOTCH. AND ONE ONLY. and if that isn't enough, drop the speakers back to zero before trying the media controls up one. hopefuly this will not only help this one problem, but will give you lifelong precious audio advice that saves you many other sound systems from being blown out of ignorance. and if you have to vacate the sound system to use the mac original controls, always turn everything back down to zero when you're done with a session, so you won't ever leave anything turned up too high on any of the 'gears'. think of it as proper shutdown sequence just like the special menu command. only you will have to do it manually every time you're done with a media session, to preserve your sound output of all three stages of amplification. janet http://community.webtv.net/mensabrains/BADCODE -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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