Control the volume of 2 simultaneously running apps separately

[Oldmacsrocked]

Hello, well, I joined this site as I have a pesky problem for which the googles and app stores out there did not offer me much help. Lets see if the experts at macrumors have the skills I have heard so much about...

Ok-
I am somewhat of a gaming addict, as I imagine many of us here are or have been at times.
To make my time playing games feel less pointless, I like to listen to podcasts or other apps with intelligent content while I game on the iPad. Usually, no prob.

Lately, I discovered that a Civilization game app had been made for iPad (Civilization Revolutions). Whoa, watch out... One of my all time favorite games. Also a huge time suck, so I need to multitask more than ever when playing this game.

Civilization revolution unfortunately comes with an extra obnoxious 'skin' to its game; one aspect of which is some pretty lame and *loud* sound effects. Of course, they included no option to turn off or reduce the sound of these noises within the game. There is a slider, but it just controls the ipad overall volume, so it turns down what I'm trying to listen to with the lame effects, missing the point of wanting to diminish at least their -relative- volume.

Ok,so bad app design. But its making me realize that this is a flaw in ios. Back in the day a simple mac and many pc's today would have lots of volume sliders to control different sources of sound. The ipad has only one very limited sound slider in settings. It feels weak! Also, it seems no one has tried to address controlling apps sound separately with an app - searches turned up nothing.

So, am I the first to discover this multitasking while gaming concept (try it, its awesome!) ... I doubt that .... Or is there a way to solve this? Or is the ipad hopelessly oversimplified to the point where i can't control it to the same level that i could control the old school simple 1980's macs?

 

[Sesshys]

Volume management please

Having a similar issue myself. I am in a skype call watching a movie with a friend though skype is louder than the site i am watching on. There really needs to be a way to turn one down or up without the other being affected as well.

 

[Night Spring]

I'm confused how you can multitask with a game on an iPad. Most iPad apps go into a standby state when you switch away from them, unless they are performing specific tasks that are allowed to run in the background, like play music, upload/download data, do geolocation tasks, etc.

That said, when you adjust the volume within an app, that volume setting tends to be remembered. So, if you turn down the volume while playing your game, then later open YouTube app and turn up the volume there, then go back to your game, the game would still be at the lower volume. I'm not guaranteeing this will always work, but it seems to work that way for me most of the time.

 

[MinEderPlayz]

If you don't want those sound effects at all, try turning off the sound in Control Center (icon no. 5), your music/video/... will still be heard but game sounds won't. Also, make sure in settings that you turn off the volume button controlling the ringtone volume.