Application volume adjuster: make the setting profile independent

Adriani90 commented 1 week ago

Steps to reproduce:

Open NVDA
Create profiles for different applications with different audio playback (e.g. MS Teams, a browser of your choice, audio editing application etc.
Enable the application volume adjuster while on the standard NVDA profile
Play some audio on an applicationw ith a profile (e.g. a youtube video on Chrome)
Adjust the volume of all applications with the coresponding commands while focusing the desktop
Switch to the Chrome window playing the Youtube video with alt+tab
Enable the application volume adjuster on this application as well
Repeat step 5 while focusing desktop
Switch back to the Chrome window
Press nvda+alt+delete to mute the application
Switch back to desktop to activate the standard NVDA profile
press nvda+alt+delete (you will hear applications unmuted)
Switch back to the the Chrome window with the Audio playback from the Youtube video
Change the applications volume with nvda+alt+pg up and pg down

Actual behavior:

Steps 5 and 8: The volume of Chrome Audio playback from the Youtube video is not changed.
Step 14: as soon as the change volume command is pressed, the Youtube audio playback is muted, although I unmuted all applications in step 12.

Expected behavior:

The application volume adjuster should not be profile dependend in order to avoid these issues. Also it is confusing to describe the setting as "it adjusts the volume of all applications other than NVDA". In this case this is not true because it depends on whether you enabled the applications volume adjuster for all your profiles or not.

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments:

n/a

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

Installed

NVDA version:

last alpha

Windows version:

Windows 11 23 H2

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

Any application with a NVDA profile

Other information about your system:

n/a

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

no

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

yes

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

n/a

Adriani90 commented 1 week ago

cc: @mltony

seanbudd commented 6 days ago

It's hard to say which behaviour is desired - you may want a situation where applications change whether or not this is enabled. We'd like to hear more from the community before making a decision.

Adriani90 commented 6 days ago

@seanbudd could elaborate what you mean exactly? I mean the feature as such is defined as adjusting volume of all applications other than NVDA. However as per current implementation this doesn‘t work as long as it is profile dependent. It‘s just confusing as it is now.

Adriani90 commented 6 days ago

So community feedback seems required in this logic, let's start a new feedback loop on this because the feature is really not working as expected. cc: @CyrilleB79, @XLTechie, @LeonarddeR, @ABuffEr maybe you have some thoughts on this as well. We really have to make sure feature are doing what they should before merging. This had already a very long feedback loop and it was from the beginning actually clear that it shouldn't be profile dependent.

CyrilleB79 commented 6 days ago

There is clearly an issue described in this ticket and the current experience is not satisfactory.

Though we can discuss if making this parameter profile independent is the most desirable solution to the issue described here.

My personal opinion is that making application volume adjuster profile independent helps clarifying the UX. It avoids to have to answer to questions such as:

if I have AVA (applications volume adjuster) enabled in notepad profile but disabled in default profile and if I mute other apps while in notepad, what should happen when I switch to other apps? Should the mute remain but we cannot unmute anymore, or should the sound be unmuted?
the same way, if I have AVA enabled in notepad profile but disabled in default profile and if I lower other apps volume to 10% while in notepad, what should happen when I switch to other apps?

If someone has a real-life use case for a profile dependent configuration of the volume adjuster, I'd like them to describe it in details.

The follow-up question if we make volume adjuster profile independent is: should other apps volume and mute other apps parameters also be profile independent? I'd say yes for clarity again.

XLTechie commented 6 days ago

I was going to comment on this earlier, to say that I agree with @Adriani90 and now also @CyrilleB79.

I hesitated, because I was thinking about what @seanbudd implied. But I just can't figure why someone would only want this feature in a subset of apps, or why we should expect that to be a valid use case.

IMO, we are really getting outside the territory of something a screen reader should be responsible for. Which is close to what I've thought about this feature all along anyway.

That said, I'm not the target audience for this, so the value of my opinion is limited. But if I had to go one way or the other, I would vote for not allowing profiles to change it, as it just muddles the UX, and would be a nightmare for people who offer support.

These opinions apply to the system-wide audio features in general, as @CyrilleB79 mentioned.

nvaccess / nvda