Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

Playing Sounds

You can have a lot of fun with digital sounds—if you know where to find them, where to put them, and how to edit them. You can play almost any kind of digitized sound files, even MP3 files, right in the Finder—if you put their windows into column view or Cover Flow view (or use Quick Look). But that’s just the beginning.

Controlling the Volume

Adjusting the volume of your Mac’s speakers couldn’t be easier: Tap the and keys on your keyboard. (The key next to them is the Mute button, which instantaneously cuts off all the Mac’s sound—a wonderful feature when you find yourself trying to use the Mac surreptitiously in a library or a church.)

Alternatively, you can add the menulet to your menu bar (Figure 15-1).

The Output tab of the System Preferences→Sound pane, by the way, is designed to let you adjust the left-to-right balance of your stereo speakers, if you have them. The stereo speakers on most Macs that have them (iMacs, laptops) are already perfectly centered, so there’s little need to adjust this slider unless you generally list to one side in your chair. (You might find ...