Ability to adjust volume of sounds

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Reported by KevanGC on 2011-03-09 06:12
Hi,

I've noticed that when you're browsing the web and you switch between Browse and Focus mode, NVDA plays these sound-effects. The sound-effects are very loud and sometimes they get annoying. It would be cool if you could add a feature for users to adjust the volumes of sound effects and progress-bar tones?
Blocking #892, #2978, #3100, #4590

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Comment 2 by jteh on 2011-03-09 06:15
Changes:
Changed title from "Browse and Focus sounds are too loud" to "Ability to adjust volume of sounds"

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Comment 3 by aleksey_s on 2011-03-09 06:55
I think better would be if voice volume controlled the volume of whole NVDA, including beeps and sound effects. This may be addressed in my NVWaveEnhancements branch.

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Comment 4 by KevanGC on 2011-03-09 06:59
What if you want to have the sounds quieter than the speech?

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Comment 5 by jteh on 2011-03-09 07:03
I am totally against voice volume controlling volume of sounds. In that case, it shouldn't be voice volume and it should be moved out of voice settings. Anyway, the original request wanted separate control for this, as the user found the sounds too loud relative to the voice.

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Comment 6 by aleksey_s (in reply to comment 5) on 2011-03-09 07:15
Replying to jteh:

I am totally against voice volume controlling volume of sounds. In that case, it shouldn't be voice volume and it should be moved out of voice settings.

Right, I didn't say it would be in voice settings.

Anyway, the original request wanted separate control for this, as the user found the sounds too loud relative to the voice.

Then we should consider separate control for beeps as well. My point is that there should exist a control which manages the whole volume, and individual adjustments should be possible also. What about sound effect factor and tones factor? this way user can adjust entire volume as well as tune, say, sound effects factor to be 80% of the entire volume.

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Comment 7 by jteh on 2011-03-09 07:45
I can't help feeling adjusting both tones and sounds separately is unnecessary or confusing. Tones and sounds are both supplementary; i.e. they aren't the primary form of audio output and they serve roughly the same purpose. However, having the sounds volume relative to the overall volume does make some sense.

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Comment by jteh on 2013-03-23 05:13
(In #3100) Duplicate of #1409.

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Comment 10 by driemer.riemer@... on 2013-04-12 04:42
I have noticed that the sound of progress bars advancing gets louder and louder the higher it gets. A nice feature would be to dynamically adjust the volume according to the pitch of the progress bars. I have had the volume of progress bars adjust so much while moving that people ask me what that beeping noise is with the volume adjusted and headphones on.

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Comment 11 by briang1 on 2013-04-12 07:53
Firstly, the apparent rising volume does not actually seem to be real. Load some bleeps into a sound editor and use a compressor on them. I'm thinking small speakers madke low frequences sound quieter in my view

with regard to matching sounds and voice. Really if you are going to do this then maybe the system sound and the voice sound are all you need. However in one case it will be a balance sound level with systems sound then the normal volume controll can be used for both. sound level for voices is different on different voices ands synths so I can understand the need to have some control.
I'm not sure if it needs more than now, or a use of the controls in a more sensible way to achieve the result.

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Comment 12 by Q on 2013-04-12 13:09
This thing is becoming overcomplicated.
Jamie: The user indicated that the sounds were too loud relative to speech volume because they turned their speech down and then did something, I.E. going in to a form field which is shockingly, terribly loud.
The discussion of progress bar beeps becoming louder as they increase in pitch is quite valid, but I think belongs in a separate ticket, this is something else we can address but has nothing to do with an overall volume.

My proposal:
A single volume which controls any speech or NVWave sound, tone, whatever. If this doesn't work we can iterate further, but let's not overthink it and consequently not move on it for another couple years.
I'll begin work on this and submit a patch to this ticket once I've got it sorted out. Once that's done we can discuss other issues further. I recommend you guys open another ticket re the progress bar tones.

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Comment 13 by jteh on 2013-04-24 02:18
Re-posting Q from nvda-dev so we don't lose this.

So I've created an initial implementation of this that seems to work. Now any sound played through nvwave.playWaveFile scales its volume to that of the synthesizer. It makes things like entering/exiting browse mode when your synthesizer is turned down much more tolerable.
The only issue with it is that, for a reason I have not yet been able to determine, the very first file played, start.wav, is not scaled. All subsequent files are. If anyone could offer any insight I'd really appreciate it.
A patch is available at:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/995729/nvwave_volume.patch

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Comment 14 by jteh (in reply to comment 12) on 2013-04-24 02:35
Replying to Q:

The discussion of progress bar beeps becoming louder as they increase in pitch is quite valid,

As noted in comment:11, I'm pretty sure they aren't actually louder. It depends on the frequency response of your listening equipment. With my decent headphones, higher beeps don't seem louder, but with my notebook speakers, they do, since my notebook speakers have crappy low frequency response.

but I think belongs in a separate ticket,

If there is actually an issue, yes, please file another ticket.

A single volume which controls any speech or NVWave sound, tone, whatever. If this doesn't work we can iterate further, but let's not overthink it and consequently not move on it for another couple years.

IN general, your proposal makes sense, but there are problems:

• Some users mightn't actually want this single volume control; e.g. if the synth they're using is particularly loud or soft relative to other synths.
• It's counter-intuitive for the volume in Voice Settings to affect other sounds. Also, that volume setting is synth specific. If you want this, it should be moved out of Voice Settings, but again, some users might want it left as it is now.
• If you do move it out of Voice Settings, it can't be adjusted from the Synth Settings ring, since that's only for synth settings.
• It's possible for a synth driver to be for a hardware synth or the like, in which case none of this makes any sense at all.

In short, the UI is the problem here and adapting it to fit this feature will require a great deal of change.

One option that was suggested is to a have a checkbox in the Synthesizer dialog named "Volume of NVDA sounds follows voice volume", "Link volume of NVDA sounds to voice volume" or similar. This is not entirely elegant, but it solves the problem in a fairly clear and intuitive way. It should probably be disabled by default to avoid confusion and so users understand what they are choosing to do.

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Comment 15 by jteh (in reply to comment 13) on 2013-04-24 03:27
Replying to jteh:

So I've created an initial implementation of this that seems to work.

Actually, !WaveOutSetVolume seems to affect the volume of the entire application, even if I change the -1 you specify to self._waveout (which is the instance specific wave out handle). It may even affect the entire system in XP. This is problematic because synthesisers control their own volume (and we don't handle audio output for all of them). (Imo, MSDN doesn't document this properly.) This means the volume is reduced by more than intended.

Now any sound played through nvwave.playWaveFile scales its volume to that of the synthesizer.

This needs to affect tones as well, but I assume you hadn't gotten around to that rather than it being an oversight.

The only issue with it is that, for a reason I have not yet been able to determine, the very first file played, start.wav, is not scaled.

Here's what's happening:

1. playWaveFile sets the volume to, say, 30.
2. eSpeak loads and uses nvwave. The volume defaults to 100. nvwave sets the volume accordingly.
3. Because !WaveOutSetVolume affects the whole application, it just overrode the volume change in step 1.

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Comment 17 by blindbhavya on 2014-11-03 17:45
Hi,
For a more advanced implementation, I propose:
Create an Audio Manager dialog box in the Preferences submenu.
On the initial screen, there should be a slider to change the volume of all NVDA sounds (such as browse mode and focus mode audio indications, progresss bar updates indicating beeps, sounds played on starting and exitting NVDA etc.)
Next there should be the Advanced button which opens up a dialog where you can customize the volume of each sound individually, depending on what suits you.
If this implementation is adopted, then probably all the check boxes in various Settings dialog to play certain sounds or not would no longer be required, because the slider of these individual controls when set to 0 anyways would disable those sounds.
Also, there should be some method by which you can test your volume modifications, when you are in the dialog itself, so you can decide on which volume suits you.
Just my suggestions...