Sound Control Panel Possessed By Devil

[lynch@ils.nwu.edu (Richard Lynch)]

Sometimes the Sound Control Panel appears possessed by the devil! 
Specifically, the sliders for the Volume control will be sliding up and
down by themselves, and the Mute checkbox will be disabled.

My current theory is that this only occurs when my application is playing
a movie, which would make sense, in a most non-Mac-ish sort of way, in
that the movie has taken over control of the Sound Control Panel, so
Finder can't do a thing with it...

If this is true, any suggestions from programmers on how to provide the
functionality of the Sound control panel from inside a program?  I'd like
to be able to switch from internal speakers to headphones and vice versa
in a reliable sort of way.

OTOH, I seem to have problems doing this with *any* application, as there
seems to be no pattern as to when the internal speaker automatically cuts
out in deference to headphones, and when it doesn't. :-(

I've set Followup-To: poster, and will summarize in a suitable fashion for
the various somewhat diverse newsgroups.

Any help appreciated.

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-- "TANSTAAFL"  Rich lynch@ils.nwu.edu