My favourite bad volume control was in Real Player around 1997 where changing the volume in the application actually changed the global volume of Windows.
I was so confused by the CD drives of that era. They all had a volume wheel and a headphone jack, but never once did I experience those working. The audio CDs were always “owned” by the OS, which piped the audio through the normal channels out my speakers or the PC headphone jack.
I imagine the existence of those means that CD drives had their own DAC and other logic. I guess there was an idea of wanting to play CD audio without it being a PC concern? Or on PCs without audio capability?
Almost all IDE and SCSI CD-ROM drives were indeed capable of playing audio CDs fully autonomously, with the host PC basically only sending them the command to start playing; many drives took it one step further and provided a play button in addition to the usual eject button, which worked even if the drive wasn't plugged at all into a machine. The audio was typically output both to the front panel headphone jack and to a 4-pin connector on the back of the drive, which you were supposed to connect to one of your sound card's aux inputs so that it would get mixed into the system audio output.
Unfortunately, a decent number of machines were not fitted with the relevant cable. Combined with the low-quality DACs that most drives used, the compatibility issues that plagued ATAPI implementations and the dramatic increase in CPU power and sound card quality throughout the mid-to-late 90s, this led media player software to quickly move on from drive based playback to so-called "digital audio extraction", where the CD is basically ripped in real time and streamed to your sound card's own DAC. Thus, unless you played older games that relied on hardware CD-DA playback [1], it's somewhat unlikely you ever experienced it under, say, Windows 98 or XP.
[1] As offloading playback to the drive had no CPU overhead, games often stored their music as additional tracks on the game disc and played it that way. Incidentally, basically all CD-ROM-based game consoles and arcade systems relied heavily on hardware accelerated playback as well, with some going even further and allowing for compressed (ADPCM) CD audio streaming with no CPU intervention.
Had a 3x NEC external scsi cd drive. It had play/ ff and rewind buttons and a little lcd that showed the track #. With the headphone jack it made a decent cd player.
They absolutely had a DAC. The earlier commercial CD-ROM drives used an internal audio cable connected to a dedicated input on the sound card pcb for cd-audio. It was years before audio players used digital audio streams.
When a computer crashed, cd audio continued to play. My PC just kept playing trough a hard reset/reboot, in fact. It would only stop playing when DOS booted far enough that it loaded mscdex, a step I could skip with a startup menu. I've always wondered why it managed to survive a reset pulse on the wire.
I almost didn't believe this, but I just tested and you're absolutely right.
I've never noticed because I use a Steel Series headset which presents as two output sound devices to Windows, the idea being that you can independently control the volume of your "game" and your "chat" application. Turns out it's useful for Teams as well.
I feel like that was super common. Apart from changing the volumes of entire channels (e.g. changing the level of Line In vs. digital sound), volume was a relatively “global” thing.
And I’m not sure if that was still the case in 1997, but most likely changing the volume of digital sound meant the CPU having to process the samples in realtime. Now on one hand, that’s probably dwarfed by what the CPU had to do for decompressing the video. On the other hand, if you’re already starved for CPU time…
I mentioned this in another thread now, but it was definitely noteworthy to me that it did this since I was used to other programs not doing so, for example Winamp, I would also have thought Windows' Media Player did not do this, but I can't remember for certain.
Winamp had a software equalizer with a preamp, which was noteworthy. Are you sure changing the volume did not mean changing the preamp level in Winamp?
If you turned off the preamp (could be directly done in the EQ window I think), what did the volume control actually do?
Maybe we're not understanding each other correctly here.
It's 30 years ago now, but my recollection is that Winamp did not change Windows' global volume.
I am less certain, but I thought Windows' own Media Player similarly also did not change Windows' global volume.
What I definitely recall correctly is being surprised that Real Player would change the Windows' global volume and this would not have been so noteworthy to me unless it was unusual compared to other applications I typically used.
That was a hardware/software thing as far as I remember. If it was using something like DirectSound it would adjust the audio independently. Other media players did the same thing.
It was definitely noteworthy that it did this since I was used to other programs not doing so, for example Winamp, I would also have thought Windows' Media Player did not do this, but I can't remember for certain.
I often write small userscripts to neutralise hostile or annoying UI patterns. I played the 'Hostile Volume' game for a while. Nice game! After a while, I wondered: if this were a real hostile website, could I write a userscript to make each level happy? Here is the script:
If you don't have a userscript manager, you can just copy the script between the two backticks and paste it to the web browser's Developer Tools console.
This is not an issue at all, but when ever I come across something like it, I like to poke at the frontend in dev tools a bit. You can pass most levels with `setVolume(25)` in the web console, since that function is just sitting in the document object. That feels like the ultimate volume UI puzzle heh.
Please don't. The game was fun, but level 22 didn't work on Tor Browser due to CORS errors. At first I thought the "NETWORK ERROR. TRY AGAIN" was part of the game until I saw the actual network tab. I wouldn't have made it past level 22 if not for the console command. Plus, if someone wants to cheat, why not?
It's actually possible to turn a linear pot into an approximation of a log pot by wiring a resistor in parallel with the wiper and one end. The volume pot is a voltage divider so the amount it "scales" by is given by Scale = Rbottom / (Rtop + Rbottom).
But, if you put a resistor in parallel, you need to work out that:
R = 1 / ((1 / R1) + (1 / R2)) or Rbottom = 1 / ((1 / Rbottom) + (1 / Rfixed)) where Rfixed is the amount you're "bending" it by.
So you could make the amount of "logness" be adjustable by having another (linear) control to vary Rfixed.
You'd work out, for a pot rotation Vol from 0 to 1:
Now for those better at arithmetic than me, how can you reverse this? Imagine you've got a pot in a piece of equipment with a resistor between the wiper and ground giving a log curve, and you've got to read that with an ADC and turn it back into the linear position of the wiper.
It ought to be possible but I've always sucked at arithmetic.
I am familiar with this game. I play a variant of it on iOS everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, with my AirPods and iPhone. I'm not very good though. Somehow iOS always wins and finds a hostile volume to initiate playback with regardless of what I do with the UI.
iOS is great! I especially like how they tied the "alarm through speakers" volume to the "notifications through earbuds" volume so that you can choose between "loud enough to wake you up in the morning and also burst your ear drums when you receive a notification with earbuds in" and "quiet enough to make notifications comfortable and also not wake you up in the morning". Truly genius parody of hostile UX.
I particularly love how they will periodically choose to only use the selected Bluetooth device for audio output, and will instead switch back to the builtin microphone. The builtin microphone may be in my pocket or across the room, and so the only indication I get is when the person on the other end of the line says that I’ve dropped off.
Nothing changes in the UI to indicate this, nor could I find any setting to change this. Sometimes swapping the audio away from the headset and back to it helps, but it it at best a temporary fix.
Great fun, well done to the horrible person who made it. Apparently my RSS reader leaves the browswr live in the background, as the audio is still playing. Horrible to do on a mobile device. Worst level by far was 17.
Finished the game. It was fun to play. I got stuck for a while on the opposite level where the display doesn't update, but was able to go through the rest just fine
I could tell in edge that right side was muted based on the icon next to the address bar and noticed you could use arrows to move one by one so just pressed left 25 times.
Yeah, I took that to mean to refresh the game and so I did.... and then lost my progress :(. I really want to play the rest but I don't want to go through the rest of the levels.
level 19, after watching the video a wonderful 4 times it doesnt unlock anything to change the volume. the only saving grace setVolume(25) has been patched :(
These mostly seem to be variations of "takes a long time / is tedious" rather than "annoying/fiddly / takes skill / is creatively bad", which is a little disappointing.
I mean technically that is a system level feature...and there's nothing really wrong with an application adjusting it's own volume as defined by a system level volume setting for that app.
I imagine the existence of those means that CD drives had their own DAC and other logic. I guess there was an idea of wanting to play CD audio without it being a PC concern? Or on PCs without audio capability?
Unfortunately, a decent number of machines were not fitted with the relevant cable. Combined with the low-quality DACs that most drives used, the compatibility issues that plagued ATAPI implementations and the dramatic increase in CPU power and sound card quality throughout the mid-to-late 90s, this led media player software to quickly move on from drive based playback to so-called "digital audio extraction", where the CD is basically ripped in real time and streamed to your sound card's own DAC. Thus, unless you played older games that relied on hardware CD-DA playback [1], it's somewhat unlikely you ever experienced it under, say, Windows 98 or XP.
[1] As offloading playback to the drive had no CPU overhead, games often stored their music as additional tracks on the game disc and played it that way. Incidentally, basically all CD-ROM-based game consoles and arcade systems relied heavily on hardware accelerated playback as well, with some going even further and allowing for compressed (ADPCM) CD audio streaming with no CPU intervention.
https://recycledgoods.com/nec-cdr-400-3x-scsi-external-plus-...
I've never noticed because I use a Steel Series headset which presents as two output sound devices to Windows, the idea being that you can independently control the volume of your "game" and your "chat" application. Turns out it's useful for Teams as well.
And I’m not sure if that was still the case in 1997, but most likely changing the volume of digital sound meant the CPU having to process the samples in realtime. Now on one hand, that’s probably dwarfed by what the CPU had to do for decompressing the video. On the other hand, if you’re already starved for CPU time…
If you turned off the preamp (could be directly done in the EQ window I think), what did the volume control actually do?
It's 30 years ago now, but my recollection is that Winamp did not change Windows' global volume.
I am less certain, but I thought Windows' own Media Player similarly also did not change Windows' global volume.
What I definitely recall correctly is being surprised that Real Player would change the Windows' global volume and this would not have been so noteworthy to me unless it was unusual compared to other applications I typically used.
The debian bug linked there implies it started 2012 or earlier, and ended in 2019.
But, if you put a resistor in parallel, you need to work out that:
R = 1 / ((1 / R1) + (1 / R2)) or Rbottom = 1 / ((1 / Rbottom) + (1 / Rfixed)) where Rfixed is the amount you're "bending" it by.
So you could make the amount of "logness" be adjustable by having another (linear) control to vary Rfixed.
You'd work out, for a pot rotation Vol from 0 to 1:
Rbottom = 1 / ((1 / Vol) + (1 / Rfixed)) Rtop = 1 - Vol Scale = Rbottom / (Rbottom + Rtop)
Now for those better at arithmetic than me, how can you reverse this? Imagine you've got a pot in a piece of equipment with a resistor between the wiper and ground giving a log curve, and you've got to read that with an ADC and turn it back into the linear position of the wiper.
It ought to be possible but I've always sucked at arithmetic.
Nothing changes in the UI to indicate this, nor could I find any setting to change this. Sometimes swapping the audio away from the headset and back to it helps, but it it at best a temporary fix.
Love the game, btw.
#3 are almost like Google Maps' zooming buttons. They jump around more, making you click on the map itself or swap in/out.
edit: ok... somehow my approach didn't work the first time, but got to 18!
Diabolical villainy in this game