My hand is on my mouse so often that is quicker to use the wheel as volume control, with a meta mouse button to switch between page scrolling and volume scrolling.
This is not only useful in games to increase or decrease the sound in real-time while to shunt loud sounds and to improve hearing the environment you are in. It is also useful in business. Quickly controlling the volume when a person interrupts.
*Note that the scroll wheel secondary meta key is used as volume control. Primary function without active meta is page scrolling.
User experience scenario. Click on a link that starts playing a video or audio source. The source is too loud with the same volume setting that worked with the previous video. It is faster to press the meta button on the mouse and scroll the wheel or press the middle button to mute then actually moving to a physical speaker, volume control on the OS, or keyboard, which often needs a meta key too.
Volume control is more natural with the wheel because it is no different the the rotational volume control on speaker versus continual button press to decrement or increment the numeric setting.
This is not only useful in games to increase or decrease the sound in real-time while to shunt loud sounds and to improve hearing the environment you are in. It is also useful in business. Quickly controlling the volume when a person interrupts.
*Note that the scroll wheel secondary meta key is used as volume control. Primary function without active meta is page scrolling.
User experience scenario. Click on a link that starts playing a video or audio source. The source is too loud with the same volume setting that worked with the previous video. It is faster to press the meta button on the mouse and scroll the wheel or press the middle button to mute then actually moving to a physical speaker, volume control on the OS, or keyboard, which often needs a meta key too.
Volume control is more natural with the wheel because it is no different the the rotational volume control on speaker versus continual button press to decrement or increment the numeric setting.