Recently, Matt mentioned that probably once a week or so, they receive questions/complaints related to Volume Protection.
So I've been mulling it over in my head the last couple of days, and thinking about how things could be improved - not just with Volume Protection, but the whole volume section inside Media Center.
The first thing is an "easy" change - I don't like the naming of the volume control options:
- Application Volume
- Internal Volume
- System Volume
- Disabled
I've seen a few people get these confused, so I think rearranging and renaming them would help.
- 64-bit JRiver Audio Engine (recommended)
- System Volume Control (global)
- Windows Mixer (per-application)
- Disabled
I'm not saying these names are ideal, but they are more descriptive, and it makes it more enticing to use the internal volume control - which is what most people should probably be using.
I normally have volume control disabled in Media Center. Not because I think there's anything wrong with it, that just works best in my system as it guarantees that I'm not going to be blasted by the volume from something
else on the machine when I don't have sound playing through Media Center. (games, browser ads, streaming videos etc.) But I've tried using it for the last few days to get an idea of how things work.
So when I saw a "Loudness" option in the volume section I thought hey, they have the option for a logarithmic volume control, because we don't perceive volume differences in a linear manner. Neat.
After reading up on it, that's not what it does at all.
What Loudness
actually does, is apply
ISO 226:2003 "Equal-loudness" contours to the audio when volume is below 100%.
Rather than "Loudness", it might help to have something more descriptive like "Use "equal-loudness" volume correction (ISO 226:2003)".
This is a really nice feature to have implemented in Media Center, and something I might like to take advantage of when my audio setup changes, but (
of course) I have some issues with the current implementation:
1. I wonder if this should be active at or above 83dB. While there are curves up to 100 phon, surely content is not mastered with this in mind, and it should only be applied when reducing volume below that level.
2. These curves are supposed to act at
absolute volume levels, not relative ones.
Now it might produce a nice "bass-boost" effect when it's enabled in an uncalibrated system, but for it to work
correctly, Media Center needs to know what your speaker output levels are.
I am tempted to push for this option only being made available once a value has been set for "Internal volume reference level" or being renamed to something else when no value has been set; I suspect that there are probably a lot of people using Media Center with "Loudness" enabled without knowing what it does.
And on that subject, I think it would make more sense for "Internal volume reference level" to be changed to: "Calibrated volume level (dB)" with the default being "0" rather than "100"
That way - by default - the volume control operates as a relative volume control, just as it does today. Any volume adjustment is ±0.5 dBFS. (more-or-less)
When you set a calibrated volume level - 83dB for example - volume adjustments should now be shown as absolute values, because it can be assumed that Media Center is being used to control the volume rather than an external device.
Instead of "Volume: 88% (-6.0 dB)" a volume adjustment should now read: "Volume: 77.0 dB (-6.0 dBFS)" or perhaps "Volume: 77.0 dB (88%)" if that's what you prefer. Percentages have little meaning in an absolute volume scale though, in my opinion.
An additional benefit of this is that now you have an absolute reference level for ISO 226:2003, it can work even when Media Center is at 100% volume.
Now onto Volume Protection:
There are things which could be done to enhance the operation of Volume Protection in its current state, but as I've been thinking it over the past few days, it's made me realize that Volume Protection could mean many things to many people, and if you are willing to expand it, it could be a lot more powerful. (which may require its own section or dialog box)
In its current state, Volume Protection seems to do three things:
- Stops volume from being adjusted by more than 5% at a time.
- Limits volume adjustments to a maximum of 20% a second.
- Starts playback at 20% volume if nothing has played for more than 30 minutes.
The way 1 & 2 are handled is not very user-friendly. There is no indicator to show why the volume control is "misbehaving" and Media Center takes control of the mouse cursor, causing it to move erratically.
What I'd like to propose would be:
- Removing whatever is being done to the mouse cursor. Even when I know the cause, I hate it.
- Adding a "ghost" volume control that is freely adjustable
- Somehow indicating that Volume Protection is active
- Gradually increasing the "real" volume control to the "ghost" control at the maximum rate allowed by Volume Protection
Here's what I imagine this looking like when going from 0% to 100% volume:
This lets the user have full control over where volume is going to end up, but doesn't make the change immediately, and gives an indication that something is limiting the adjustment they're trying to make.
You could make it so that hovering or clicking on the red speaker icon (which normally brings up the volume control menu) will then give a brief description explaining that Volume Protection has been engaged and is limiting adjustments.
And as for enhancements to Volume Protection, here are a few things I had been thinking about:
- "Night Mode" - rather than when there has not been anything played for 30 minutes, in a set time range (say 10pm-8am) always limit volume when starting playback. (and fade up to it)
- In addition to that, "Night Mode" could have a fixed upper limit on volume, and gradually fade down to that by some set duration - even over the space of an hour perhaps.
- During normal operation, I don't want that 20% limit at all - I want protection from unexpected loudness (i.e. something going wrong) but don't mind if playback starts at full volume. For some people, 20% is probably too low, or 30 minutes is too short - or not short enough. Perhaps this should be variable.
- Protection from everything else. If WASAPI Exclusive mode is being used, Media Center is always outputting silence, even if a track is stopped.