Thanks Andy, great points.
I think we have a basic question here that nobody is really asking: are
users going to want to adjust volume per app? Yes, I know some of us
may, but would users really use it?
I'd be curious about Vista's experience with it - Vista can do this,
can't it?
I think right now pulse audio lets me do it, and I like the idea, but
man is it a lot of work to make adjustments to all those volume
sliders. it's much easier to just stick with what is set right now and
adjust the dial on my speakers, seriously.
That's what a little usability test could help us figure out - is this
first of all something people would actually use. And I don't mean
asking them if they'd use it - I mean really understanding a task where
it would be helpful, and watching what they do.
I'm guessing that in general, the majority of people will just leave
things as they are.
That's not to say we shouldn't give them the ability to tweak of
course, nor does it mean there couldn't be some presets, but this all
feels somewhat like we're building a solution to a problem that nobody
really is interested in solving.
Now if we wanted to look at it from an accessibility point of view then
there may be something interesting, but again we'd need to ask some
users.
Kirk
Andy Owen wrote:
On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 06:42 -0800, Kirk Bridger wrote:
Put another way, isn't there some way we can just intelligently guess
which apps should be louder? For example, the application I'm
currently working in versus background. Application notification vs
application output (like music players). The use cases for volume
aren't all that complex, but this discussion feels like it is becoming
complex.
This sounds like a bad direction to go in. The problem with all this
priority based sound stuff is that it takes the one thing that everyone
understands (a volume slider) and replaces it with something where the
behaviour is totally non-obvious.
If I have my music player as priority 1, and system sounds as priority
2, then what does that even mean? My guess would be that priority 1 gets
full volume, and priority 2 gets half volume, priority 3 gets 25%
volume, etc. But I'm sure that everyone else has different theories -
which means that unless it works perfectly, and the volume manager has
the same concept of priorities to me, then it will make things harder to
use, as now to get the behaviour you want, you need to work out what it
does to your priorities to set a volume level.
To make a bit more of a point of it - it is really hard (I'm thinking
"impossible", but not saying it) for a computer to know what the
perceived loudness of some audio will be. Our perception changes with
age, and if you halve the amplitude of a wave form, instead of hearing
the same thing at a lower loudness, you lose bass and treble much more
(think of those curves that show ear sensitivity as a function of
frequency, and you'll see why). For this reason, I don't think we should
be trying to be smarter than the person sitting at the computer - my
computer even tells me that its volume is 0%, while playing back sound -
we are not nearly at the stage where we can do intelligent mixing. Given
that we have no way of knowing how loud the speakers or headphones stuff
is being played back over are, this is an impossible battle.
Instead, we should make it easy for a person to adjust the mix. This
means that immediate feedback is good (including visual feedback, but
also meaning low latency audio feedback). It means that a discoverable
interface is good, and it also means that exposing a model to the user
that they can easily understand is good - and the model of "master
volume" plus "per application volume" is quite easy to understand, and
there isn't much ambiguity.
I wouldn't consider myself to be a usability expert, but I do know
enough about sound and hearing to know that a person's ear is going to
do a much better job of setting the right mix than another application.
So any design that makes it easy for me to adjust levels gets my vote.
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