THIS IS A COPY OF A RESPONSE to someone on another category… I’m putting here because it will be useful. (I just need to fix some of the sentences) 
Every one of the ‘volumes’ in Syrinscape is essential to creating the realistic and immersive sound you hear in Syrinscape’s official content. I’ll step through and reference each one to give you a bit more of an idea of how they are working together to make Syrinscape sound great.
Master Online Volume
This is just a normal Master Volume like on any app. It also provides a boost up to 200% to compensate for the fact that necessarily almost every other volume in the app subtracts from the volume of a sample. Sure you could use the system volume instead, but that is harder to get to. When i am running a game, I often give a quick touch to the Master Volume to make the overall sound a bit louder or softer.
Soundset Initial Volume
This helps to adjust the relative volume of an entire SoundSet compared to ALL other SoundSets in Syrinscape. It also provides a potential boost up to 200%. I generally set this to 140% as one of the first things I do when I make a new SoundSet. It is important to have there so if we discover a SoundSet is generally louder or softer than the rest of the content we can adjust it globally rather than having to adjust every volume of every element in every mood.
Element Initial Volume
This is ONLY the volume that an element is set to when it FIRST loads into the Fantasy Player. This is important because a MOOD ramps to its set volume. For example if an element is sitting at 100%. It starts and ramps to 5%, you can get a weird BURST of volume as it gets to the ‘correct’ setting.
Individual Element Playlist Volumes (for each sound)
These can usually be left alone, BUT if one or more of the samples in a Playlist are quite different in volume from other samples, this inequity can be fixed here. You can also randomise the playback of a sample in the Playlist here by setting a range. I use this fairly frequentlyl.
Mood Element Target Volume.
Obviously this is the main thing Syrinscape does, so I hopefully don’t need to explain this one.
Each Individual Element Volume next to the round activation button.
This is the same as the volume setting in the Fantasy Player and allows the user to quickly change the volume of a running Element without having to create a MOOD to get the element to that volume. The current playing state of Syrinscape can then be saved easily as a new MOOD in ANY SoundSet. I often use this during Play to tweak what I am hearing (eg boost the music up a bit, or turn down the weapon clashing sounds after I’ve heard them for a while).
Variable 3D positioning Volume
This is another one of the MAIN things Syrinscape does. I actuallly think your comments here might hint at a bit of a basic misunderstanding of the way we design sound in Syrinscape. These settings should be used with MOST of the sounds you are bringing into an environment (whether you are using surround speakers or not). Note we hear sounds in 3D even though we have only two ears. Dropping sounds into a 3D environment and applying the appropriate 3D effects in reverb and the resultant variations in phase that create an immersive effect is how we do sound design. YOU don’t need to think about this though… just think about where the sounds might be positioned in reality. Making a town? Position your dog woofs to be 20 to 40 metres away in ANY direction. Having a conversion with a vendor? Place him directly in front of the listener at about 5 meters. Makes sense?
Distance setting under 3D Positioning.
Note, that along with the above setting, yes, any setting here will tend to make sound softer… that’s why we’ve got those two 200% boosts, to get you back up.
Online Player Volume.
This is important so players playing in your game can tweak the volume THEY are hearing relative to what everyone else is hearing depending on the peculiarities of their system, sound setup etc.
Wew! That was a lot of words.
Have a read of all that, and let me know if it makes sense? AND ask more questions.
This should go into our (being worked on now) documentation for the Online Player!!!
So much the infos!!!