forcing unmute and volume of sound card

[nvaccessAuto]

Reported by joshknnd1982 on 2013-03-05 13:01 In the next version of NVDA, please make it so that when NVDA starts up it will check to see if your sound cards are not muted. If they are it will force them to not be muted anymore. And it would also check to make sure your speaker volume is not set to 0. If it is set to 0, NVDA will automatically raise the volume to 30 or 40% to make sure sound can be heard. Sometimes when you plug NVDA into a computer and try to use it or if you attempt to install it I find the last person using the computer has muted the sound or turned the volume all the way down or both. If NVDA does these muted speaker and volume checks and unmutes the sound card and raises the volume if needed then sighted help will not be necessary just to unmute speakers and raise sound card volume so NVDA can be used. Sound card volume is different than the volume found under preferences under voices and this is what NVDA would have to check for and correct if needed. If the volume is not set to 0 and is no more than 10% then NVDA will not perform the unmute or raising of the volume. I think this is a very important feature for a screen reader to have so blind people don't have to ask for help if speakers are muted. not everyone has a braille display so this is a good way to make for absolute certain there is sound at NVDA startup. this should apply to all operating systems, Since unmuting and changeing volume are different in each OS it will be necessary probably for NVDA to detect what OS it is running on and then unmute speakers and change volume accordingly. Blocking #4926

[LeonarddeR]

@LeonarddeR, have you read #3049 (comment)?

I hadn't read that, but it doesn't change my opinion.

But on the other side, in the case of re-muting after NVDA usage, the user who comes after the NVDA user may wonder why audio does not work anymore after having heard NVDA speaking.

I believe sighted users have a visual indication of muting on their system tree, but I'm not sure about that.

Regarding the default value of automatic muting, I agree that it should be opt in, since any modification of system parameters outside of NVDA should not be automatic.

Seems we agree on the most important thing: Leave my system parameters alone without my consent. Making it opt in, however, creates the case of the feature being useless when trying to install a new copy of NVDA on a system which audio is muted. how about an approach where NVDA always unmutes, but also always prompts when unmuted? For example: "NVDA detected that your soundcard was muted and automatically unmuted it for your convenience. Would you like to persist this?" When clicking no, the sound state will be restored. When clicking yes, it is up to the user to leave the system in a state that's appropriate for the next user.

[Adriani90]

I was thinking more about this. @lukaszgo1 wrote:

I agree NVDA should not restore the sound settings when closing, mainly because there is no guarantee that user did not change the volume / mute state from the Windows volume mixer after starting NVDA.

In that case there is a visual indication in the system tray. Is there another way to technically mute/ unmute the sound card? If the user changed the sound card mute / unmute state manually from system tray we don't need a restore after NVDA exits because this would be the same behavior a sighted person would do.

My concern is that changing sound states only by turning NVDA on and off without restoring previous situation is too agressive. There are situations where a sighted person would still like to use a muted sound card after us (e.g. when sitting in a room with more people and everyone joins a Teams meeting. In that case only one sound card must be unmuted otherwise you will have a lot of echo and disturbing sounds. Users might not think about this when using NVDA on a machine. But when they change the sound card state manually from the system tray, then it has a specific process behind doing it. @CyrilleB79 wrote:

But on the other side, in the case of re-muting after NVDA usage, the user who comes after the NVDA user may wonder why audio does not work anymore after having heard NVDA speaking.

Well, we had the same feeling before starting NVDA. I think it is ok to preserve the situation after exit as it was before starting. @LeonarddeR wrote:

Leave my system parameters alone without my consent. Making it opt in, however, creates the case of the feature being useless when trying to install a new copy of NVDA on a system which audio is muted. how about an approach where NVDA always unmutes, but also always prompts when unmuted? For example: "NVDA detected that your soundcard was muted and automatically unmuted it for your convenience. Would you like to persist this?" When clicking no, the sound state will be restored. When clicking yes, it is up to the user to leave the system in a state that's appropriate for the next user.

Not sure we need a promt at all. Sound split for example will be also able to restore sound parameters after NVDA exit when #16312 is merged. But yeah, in case there are technical limitations in implementing the same approach as in #16312, a promt is needed which informs that soundcard state will not be restored after NVDA exit.

I think we probably all agree that this automatic unmute feature should be an optional feature in the audio settings category of NVDA.

[Adriani90]

One further approach though maybe not fully related, it seems at least when starting Windows 10 or 11 in safe mode with network driver enabled, NVDA and narator seem to work properly. Narator is covered also in this video, I discovered by chance that NVDA works as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdjzJXpCL4g

No idea which driver they use to deliver the sound, but for sure all other sounds are muted and the sound card driver is disabled according to my tests.

[derekriemer]

There's a caveat here. People who have NVDA remote set up and NVDA running, but have things configured such that they really don't want the remote computer talking. Derek Riemer Improving the world one byte at a time! ⠠⠊⠍⠏⠗⠕⠧⠬ ⠮ ⠸⠺ ⠐⠕ ⠃⠽⠞⠑ ⠁⠞ ⠁ ⠐⠞⠖

• Personal website: https://derekriemer.com • Email: @.*** • Phone: (303) 906-2194

On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 7:38 PM Bill Dengler @.***> wrote:

Given the recent acceptance of #16273 https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/pull/16273 and #16286 https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/pull/16286, I think a case could be made for taking this as well if no Braille display is configured/detected.

CC @mltony https://github.com/mltony, @seanbudd https://github.com/seanbudd

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