Hey there,
I implemented a feature I've been missing in DOSBox - controlling mixer volume using global hotkeys. This is useful for DOSBox instances running without a full-blown desktop environment (that's my case). I tried to mimic the coding style used in src/hardware/mixer.cpp. I picked ALT+F9 and ALT+F10 purely because they weren't used anywhere else yet.
Attached is a patch against current SVN trunk. Hopefully you find it useful. Thanks for your work on this project!