Patent ID: 7502480

Claim:
In a system having one or more software applications for generating audio signals, wherein the system includes an audio setting hierarchy, a method for managing system audio settings, the method comprising causing one or more processors to perform the following acts: generating a system audio settings control corresponding to a processing of audio signals from a first software application through the audio setting hierarchy, wherein the audio setting hierarchy comprises a plurality of stages of a computer system, wherein the audio signals generated by the one or more software applications are processed within the plurality of stages of the computer system, and wherein a volume setting control of each stage of the computer system impacts the overall volume of audio signals generated by the one or more software applications; obtaining a user manipulation of the first software application system audio settings control; and adjusting one or more audio settings in the audio setting hierarchy corresponding to the user manipulation of the system audio settings control, wherein adjusting the system audio settings includes: generating a flat volume characteristics tree based upon current hardware volume settings prior to the user manipulation by at least: generating a hardware characteristics tree corresponding to current hardware volume settings; mapping the hardware characteristics tree into a flat volume characteristics tree; and optimizing the flat volume characteristics tree by at least performing a top-down replacement of all node values with a product of a value from a parent node and a current value; modifying the flat volume characteristics tree according to the user input; and adjusting the hardware volume setting based on the flat volume characteristics tree.