WaveController 0.0.3.2 prealpha

[0.0.3.2] - 2026-09-10

Added

• Per-effect intensity dial: each DSP effect in the channel FX popover now has its own rotary dial (drag vertically, scroll wheel to nudge, double-click to reset) controlling how aggressively that effect is applied, in addition to its existing on/off toggle. Includes a 50% neutral-position marker and dims visually when its effect is disabled.
• Plugin management ("Install Effect"): Effects Manager can now install external VST3/LV2 plugin bundles via a folder picker or drag-and-drop. Installed plugins are symlinked into ~/.vst3/~/.lv2 and tracked in a manifest so they can be safely removed later — built-in effects, system-found plugins, and pre-existing user-directory plugins are never removable, only ones the app itself installed.
• Custom plugin scan paths: Effects Manager can now scan additional user-specified directories for VST3/LV2 bundles (e.g. Flatpak-sandboxed or DAW-bundled plugin folders).

Changed

• OOBE Page 5 redesigned: replaced the redundant "Primary Input/Output Device" dropdowns with the same "Allow WaveController to set system input/output defaults?" toggle used in Settings. Primary device selection is now derived automatically from the hardware chosen on Page 4 instead of asking twice.
• "Indexed Plugins Library" now hides internal duplicates: Built-in effects (already shown as toggles in the DSP Chain section) and the raw LADSPA re-discovery of WaveController's own bundled engine files no longer clutter the plugin list — only genuinely external/user plugins are shown.

Fixed

• FX master enable/disable toggle didn't reliably stop the DSP chain. reload_channel_fx() treated the literal channel id "mic" as a "no specific channel" sentinel and always re-derived the channel list via heuristics instead of trusting a real, currently-registered channel id — made the toggle's effective behavior fragile and hard to diagnose. Now resolves a known channel id directly.
• Effects Manager's global per-effect toggles didn't actually disable effects for channels with a stale per-channel override. An effect turned off globally could still run if a channel's saved FX record had that effect explicitly enabled. The global toggle is now a hard kill-switch (enabled = global AND per-channel), and per-channel FX popovers hide rows for globally-disabled effects, refreshing live the instant a global toggle changes (no restart or channel recreation needed).
• Mic silence / audio routing drift after extended sessions, root-caused to config state (mix/channel ids, per-channel FX flags) drifting out of sync with the live PipeWire graph over long-running sessions with lots of manual reconfiguration. Documented the recurring symptom and the reliable fix (full config wipe + reinstall) in repo memory for faster recovery; a lighter in-app "Reset Audio Routing" action was identified as a good follow-up but not built this session.

Internal / Maintenance

• Removed 3 confirmed-dead functions with zero call sites anywhere in the repo: reconcile_meter_ports() (stream_resolver.py), bind_app_to_target_sink()/unbind_app_from_target_sink() (app_tracker.py), sync_source_to_mixes() (source_manager.py) — all abandoned duplicate/experimental routing paths superseded by the logic actually running in pipewire_manager.py.
• Removed unused legacy attributes output_devices/connected_audio_devices from usb_hardware.py (written but never read anywhere).
• Added timeouts to the hot-path PipeWire routing sync subprocess calls (pw-link, pw-dump, wpctl) so a hung call can no longer freeze the background sync thread indefinitely.
• Hoisted a redundant per-channel×mix pw-dump call in _sync_channel_audio_routing()'s link-verification step to run once per sync pass instead of once per channel/mix combination.
• Fixed two test-isolation bugs in tests/test_fx_chain.py that depended on the real, mutable ~/.config/WaveController/config.json instead of mocking config_manager — these were exposed (not caused) by the FX kill-switch fix above.
• Updated WaveController_PipeWire_Node_Reference.txt: added the pre-fader FX chain node/routing section, live-verified the Group Channel contract against a real capture, documented the Discord-reports-as-"Chromium" PipeWire naming quirk, and recorded both bug fixes above.
• Full test suite passes (86/86) after every change this session.