Re: [Usability] New Sound Preferences and Volume Control



Hi Shaun,

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 09:23 -0600, Shaun McCance wrote: 
> You talked (in comments I snipped) about presentation mode
> for presentations and movies, which I totally agree with.
> But what about music presentation mode?  I have speakers
> in my house outside my office.  Sometimes, I play music
> to listen to around the house, especially during parties
> and such.  The music is clearly the most important thing,
> even though my screen is locked.

Some programs have this already in some form, they call it "party mode"
or something. What I would imagine is, you put your music player in
party mode, and non-critical notifications get muted, since you don't
want everyone to listen to funny sounds when you manipulate the
playlist. Critical notifications should be heard over the music, but
they should be critical as well: if your battery is draining or your
processor is frying, you'd rather have a notification, because otherwise
the party will be over soon, anyway. In any other case, the computer
should shut up and let you and your friends enjoy the music.

Now, if critical notifications should be loader, I don't know. Maybe, if
music is already playing, it is safe to suppose that the volume is high
enough to be heard by people, wherever they are now. Playing
notifications at a similar volume should suffice.

> > By the way, I don't see a need to control the volume of multimedia
> > applications separately. If you think of it, unless you are a multimedia
> > freak who enjoys playing five videos simultaneously to show the power of
> > his processor, you don't want to play more than one think at a time.
> > Either you have some music or you have a movie running, and that's it.
> > This means that a single slider for multimedia volume should suffice.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_Oz  ;-)

Well, when I was still young and brave, I used to record MTV Unplugged
shows in VHS, and then play them back using a CD from the same show as
an enhanced soundtrack replacement. It used to seriously improve the
sound quality, but had the annoying tendency of going out of sync after
a few minutes. Nothing is perfect, I guess.

But, nostalgia aside, I thought I had been emphatic enough about my
proposal *not being intended for computer/multimedia/sound equipment
freaks*. I guess I completely failed in this regard, though... ;-)

Cheers,

M. S.

P. S. Dark Side of the Oz looks cool, thanks for the link!



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