[Suggestion] Add a keystroke to preview a sound, and allow editing sound schemes without them applying in real time

[ultrasound1372]

I am a blind computer user and make use of the NVDA screen reader. This program seems pretty accessible with it, aside from the slightly weird list of sounds, but I assume that's visually a grid and am not proposing that be changed. My main issue here is twofold, one thing that I believe as a necessity and another that would be a convenience. Please let me know if I need to break this up into two separate issues.

Firstly, is there any way currently of previewing a sound without needing to open the context menu? Could a mouse user merely click on it to play it? Working from the keyboard, needing to use the context menu to preview is somewhat annoying, so I suggest adding support for pressing the space bar to preview the sound that has keyboard focus. I'm unsure how exactly keyboard focus manifests to your UI toolkit of choice, though. It might be the event source or some state on the list.

Secondly, could it be possible to import, edit, and export a sound scheme without it necessarily automatically getting set as the Windows sound scheme? I was editing one earlier to try and fix some of the sounds and noticed that it started playing the select sound every time I navigated in the list of sounds. This could perhaps be done in the form of a scheme editor tab, or a separate button to set scheme, perhaps paired with a checkbox in settings, automatically use imported schemes?

[ORelio]

Hi, thanks for your detailed feedback.

I try to make Sound Manager accessible because I think it is important for a sound scheme program to be accessible. There were already some changes to accommodate screen readers in v3.3.0 and v3.3.1.

Regarding your first point: Currently, besides mouse click and context menu, you can preview a sound by selecting and deselecting it using arrow keys. But previewing a sound using the Space key is a very good idea, intuitive and straightforward to implement. Just added it for inclusion in the next release.

About editing a sound scheme without importing: This would unfortunately require significant rework in the code. However, I'm aware of the issue with Select sound and will try again to make it less annoying. The user interface being made with standard Windows Forms components, it plays the Select sound automatically when selecting items and I can't disable it at the API level. I already wrote some code to try not playing it every time, but it is not working well, especially with keyboard.

Lastly, regarding the sound list: Indeed, it is visually a grid. The Windows File Explorer also has a similar grid view, but I just noticed thanks to your comment that the File Explorer will seamlessly wrap around lines when using left/right keys, while the one from Sound Manager will not, which is a bit confusing for blind users. Since I'm using a standard component, It should be fairly simple to toggle list view. Taking note of your suggestion.

[ORelio]

Please find below a test build including the following changes:

• Preview a sound using the Space key
• Reduce annoying "Select" sounds in the Sound Manager UI

📁 sound-manager-v3.4.1 TEST 2026-06-12.zip

Let me know if that works for you.

[ultrasound1372]

Both goals of that test build functioned, with a potentially unintended side effect. Scrolling over the select sound now doesn't play anything at all, unlike every other bound sound in the list. Pressing space on it works though. I hadn't actually realized that it was supposed to play the sound each time it was focused, which makes space slightly redundant but useful for screen reader users as the system will chatter at us when the focus changes, talking over the sound. I also appreciate that pressing space again does actually interrupt playback and start over, rather than potentially stacking it.

[ORelio]

Okay, good.

Yes, to prevent Windows from playing the Select sound, the new workaround is to disable it, wait a tiny amount of time, then re-enable it. This has the side effect of not playing Select itself when selecting it, because SoundManager also relies on the Windows sound scheme under the hood to play each sound. But I think overall it is less annoying that the previous behavior. I'll see later if I can find a better fix that does not exclude Select. Other preview methods work on Select (Pressing Space or using context menu).

Also yes, the sound player object under the hood will automatically interrupts the current sound if trying to play another one, this is by design.

I'll come back later when I have a test build ready for the list view.

[ORelio]

Hi,

Here is a new test build with the following changes:

1. Add List display mode in addition to the default Tiles display mode

• List will show half less sounds at once on screen, but easier to navigate with keyboard for accessibility
• Available in context menu for any sound (right click menu): Switch to List view
• Only need to switch once, then the preferred display mode is saved to configuration file
• On first launch without configuration file, Sound Manager will look for the SPI_GETSCREENREADER flag in global System Parameters and automatically default to List layout if a screen reader seems to be present.

2. Fix playing "Select" sound when selecting it

• The "Select" sound will play with a tiny delay, under the hood playback waits for it to be unblocked by the workaround described in my message above. This should be nearly imperceptible.

📁 sound-manager-v3.4.1 TEST 2026-06-13.zip

Let me know if that works for you.

[ultrasound1372]

Running this test build immediately says that the application has stopped working and I must click close the program. Windows 10 22H2 with NVDA running.

[ORelio]

Thanks for your feedback. Managed to reproduce on one of my test environments. There was a race condition because I used the wrong object as lock for "Fix playing 'Select' sound when selecting it". As a result, the object could be null and crash the application depending on which thread goes first. Here is the same build with that bug fixed:

📁 sound-manager-v3.4.1 TEST 2026-06-14.zip

[ultrasound1372]

Nope, still crashes. I'm unsure how I'd produce a minidump or anything for you to debug. Is there an error log somewhere?

[ORelio]

Okay, so, there should be a pop-up dialog in Windows Forms containing the exception, but it turns out it seems not accessible enough, beacause I did not manage to copy its contents using keyboard alone. Additionally, the pop-up does not show up from a thread.

So I did the following:

1. Add exception handling to invoke the usual pop-up from a thread instead of crashing
2. When the app is a test build, log all exceptions to SoundManager.exe.debug.log

Hopefully you should get something meaningful in SoundManager.exe.debug.log before the app crashes.
You should not need to copy details from the pop-up though, because it should also be present in the log file.

📁 sound-manager-v3.4.1 TEST 2026-06-15.zip

[ultrasound1372]

`-- Starting debug log --
2026-02-15T15:57:30.984038-06:00
Version: 3.4.1 TEST 2026-02-15

-- Exception --
2026-02-15T15:57:31.013454-06:00
DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users\Colton\AppData\Roaming\SoundManager\SoundManager.ini'.
at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)

-- Exception --
2026-02-15T15:57:31.033554-06:00
TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'SoundManager.Settings' threw an exception.
at SoundManager.Settings.get_PatchStartupSound()
at SoundManager.Program.Main(String[] args)

-- Unhandled Exception --
2026-02-15T15:57:31.037073-06:00
TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'SoundManager.Settings' threw an exception.
at SoundManager.Settings.get_PatchStartupSound()
at SoundManager.Program.Main(String[] args)
`

[ORelio]

Thanks, found it. That was unrelated to the Select sound code. The crash happened when launching Sound Manager while the data folder does not exist, because in the changes for "Add List display mode in addition to the default Tiles display mode" I wanted to auto-save the setting on initialization, but the Settings folder may not exist yet. Fixed.

Now you should be able to test the following changes:

1. Add List display mode in addition to the default Tiles display mode
2. Fix playing "Select" sound when selecting it

📁 sound-manager-v3.4.1 TEST 2026-06-16.zip

[ultrasound1372]

The list display mode does appear to work and automatically activate when using a screen reader, so task 1 is complete. Task 2 is not though. It now plays the select sound upon selecting any item in the list, and this cuts off any other sound that plays when focused. It didn't used to do this I don't think. I can hear tiny blips of the sound I focused on so I know it isn't just playing the select sound again. When focused on select I don't know if it tried to play it twice or not, though.