Python: Change Windows 7 master volume

audio, python, windows

Solution

The easy way to do this is through `ISimpleAudioVolume`.

If you're using the Win32 COM wrappers from the `pywin32` project, this should be pretty easy to access in Python.

As the documentation explains, there are multiple ways to get a reference to an `ISimpleAudioVolume`. You need to get a cross-process session, the way `sndvol.exe` does. See the top-level documentation on WASAPI for details.

The pseudocode will look something like this:

mmde = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_MMDeviceEnumerator, None, 
                        CLSCTX_ALL, IID_IMMDeviceEnumerator)
mmd = mmde.GetDefaultAudioEndpoint(eRender, eMultimedia)
mgr = mmd.Activate(IID_IAudioSessionManager)
sav = mgr.GetSimpleAudioVolume(None, True)
sav.SetMasterVolume(0.5)

Problem

I want to be able to control the master volume (not for an application, but for the current active speaker) in Python. This seems to be a tricky topic; I tried doing it in C# but I couldn't even get it to work there. Is there a way to accomplish this? (Windows 7 x64) Please note that this question has not been answered before since my question is specifically about Python. Also, the project VonC is referring to there does't work on Windows 7.

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