Temporarly reducing sound volume in PowerPoint Presentation

[Fabian]

I have a (autoplayed) Powerpoint 2007 presentation with background music. The
presentation's text shall also be hearable as spoken recorded sound (some
users are not able to read the text). I have imported the according wav files
and have them played on clicking. This works so far. But the background
music's volume has to be reduced while the text is spoken (much like the
"overtalk" on the radio).
I'm not familiar with Powerpoint's VBA object model. My first idea was to
write a VBA macro doing the following:

1. Search the presentation for the backround music object (it's currently
placed on the first slide).
2. Store it's original volume value.
2. Have it's volume reduced.
3. Play the foreground text wav file.
4. Restore the background music's original volume.

I have to be able to use it for several different foreground wav files
throughout the presentation.

How do I do this? Unfortunately Powerpoint 2007 doesn't have a macro
recorder. One additional important thing: It has to be compatible with
Powerpoint 2003 (i.e. it still has to work when saved as ppt 2003 file).

Thanks in advance for your help,

Fabian

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

There's no way to control the volume of sounds through PPT's object model.
PowerPoint doesn't even play sounds natively ... it passes them off to the MCI
media player (mplay32.exe on WinXP, for example).

The MCI API should let you programmatically control the overall volume, but I
don't think it'll let you control the volume of individual sound files as
they're playing (but I'm no expert on the MCI player; I could be wrong).