Is there anything like a firewall for sound cards?

Factual Questions
1

Is there anything for Windows computers which will let you know which application just made a sound? Or give you the ability to tweak the sounds from an application?

Sometimes an application on my computer will make a sound. Since I don’t have all the sounds memorized, I don’t always know what the sounds indicate or even which application made the sound. There are also cases when I want the sounds from one application to be louder or softer than other applications.

Many of us have experience with network firewalls, which allow you to see which processes are using the network and to control their access. I was wondering if there’s anything similar for sound cards. Something that will let you see who is accessing the sound card, which application last used it, and give you the ability to block or change an application’s use of the sound card.

2

It sounds like it ought to be possible with something from Windows Sysinternals utilities - I think if you identify the dll files belonging to the driver (device manager should tell you this), you would be able to monitor what thread or process is using them.

3

It doesn’t have a historical display, but you could just keep the volume mixer open (right-click the volume display in your task bar and select “Open Volume Mixer”. When you see a sound you don’t recognize, glance at the mixer window and see which program’s equalizer bar is moving. If you don’t want that program to make sound, you can mute the program from there.

This of course assumes you’re using Vista or newer and not XP, XP did not include the volume mixer control panel.