Well i have a quick one, and this migth be easy to answer.
I remember in the past MS has profiles for speaker sets, but that never actullay worked right.
So I wonder it is possible ofr MS to set profiles to different speaker set so it can put limits to each channel to avoid music when playing to loud distord?
Of course an user can deactivate this if he chooses.
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Your patent application for a "Flat Volume Control" seems to be of
questionable novelty. Hardware digitial mixers have been doing this for
years. E.g. Roland's VM series does Fader Groups which may manage an
arbitrary number of channels, including mute and volume. So your
approach seems like a specialization of a general technique which is
widely used.
Also, it seems some of your worry on UI has to do with not so with it
users forgetting to turn up the volume on their external speakers. You
(Steve) showed an example of your laptop which has a "potentiometer".
Problem with a potentiometer is their physical manifestation is
stateful. Why not mandate stateless volume control devices like a V-Pot
so that your software has complete control. For the masses that don't
know what a V-pot is (virtual potentiometer) you can see an example
here: Mackie V-Pot (note V-Pots have been around a long time, so Mackie did not invent them - though they seem to suggest so on this web page)
Yes I realize that you would have to create a new remote interface
between audio cards and remote amplifier/speakers but I think that
would be of added value and something that *is* patentable.
<ducking> If you
all were worth your salaries  </ducking> you could even try
masking
this information in a wide-band low volume signal on top of the audio
channel so that existing audio connectors wouldn't have to be
redesigned and the signals would be imperceptible by any human. Caveat,
I would actually be surprised if this technology hasn't been invented
yet.
Lastly, quick question, what's going on with DirectX
DirectSound/DirectMusic? Are they going to be intergrated into WAVE?
<edit> and how soon? </edit>
Regards,
Ryan
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Are there going to be new featuers in Vista that would allow me to pipe audio out of one application directly into another .. sort of like virtual patch cables from the "output" of one app to the "input" of another audio app.
Many audio production and recording applications use ReWire to accomplish this - each application has to be ReWire aware and the applications act as ReWire hosts or ReWire clients or both. Will the OS support something like this natively?
Glad to see what I've seen so far.
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Is there any way to get at the per-application audio stream via
DirectSound or some other API? I'd like to be able to record what I
hear from any given application.
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Steve Ball is a great. You can hear the years of experience he has. I like when he talks from a general user perspective. I also agree when he says that MS should be carefull using PR-Speak ('glitch-free'). Steve and Larry talk about things everybody as a user has experienced (incl. Bluescreens, Hang-ups, etc), so "per-app-volume" is a huge step that adds to the user-xp(erience).
It must have been hard to convince the kernel-team to give audio the low-level-priority-access they need for high-quality audio. Not only pro-audio-customers will be excited.
thx for the video - and BTW, the sound was ok 
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Just catching up to these threads and questions... It's been a busy time in Building 50 lately. So... "why is there an OSX box stapled to the wall in the hall outside my office ?" What a strange question? Is it not obvious? Here's one answer (among many): inspiration and motivation.
Let's face it: many things that Apple has done recently have been beautiful and well-executed. Certain products, like certain people, have an intangible charisma which, in itself, can be a source of energy and inspiration. This cannot be captured in a spec - it is something that is transmitted via direct experience. Hanging this box is not about copying features or parroting an existing set of functions (as vulgar "Redmond, start you copiers" banners have proclaimed in the past) although, those are easy assumptions.
Whether you love or hate Microsoft, the fact is that, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of innovations, insights, and brilliant ideas, designs, and products born within Microsoft people and teams every year, a fraction of which make it (often without high-falutin' theatrical press events or magic shows) into the huge line-up of MS products. If find it rather naive to assume that engineers or artists who are educated in technology or arts should intentionally avoid exploring the products and aspirations of the opposite brain or competitors or explore areas that appear to be outside of that which we like or dislike to avoid 'noise' or 'pollution' or influence or ideas that challenge our own sense of value. Okay, that sentence was a mess. Let me try that again.
I want to experience and be influenced by and inspired by all that is beautiful, graceful, elegant and excellent in the world - including people and/or products who one might assume are our 'enemies' or competitors. Even the idea of 'enemies' is sooo 'chair-throwingly' 90s and out of tune with what is required for long-term, sustainable success. The world is a huge place, and the quantity and quality of opportunities are only increasing as we continue to mature as a world society of billions and billions of network-conected, media-based people. Is there anyone alive who is not inspired by the absolute magic in the possibility of a 50" plasma HD home theatre connecting them to every person, meeting, genius, book, lecture, concert, film, song, class, thought or media event that has ever occurred or is occurring right now? Okay, there may be a few monks who prefer to practice their meditation or run symmetrical scales on their guitar in the corner rather than jack-in to these streams. We're surrounded today by so many mundane miracles that we've become numb to the incredible options we have at our fingertips as we sit at these hypnotizing screens.
While, 'getting there first' may have some buzz, biz, and brand value, it's only a small fraction of what really matters. Who reading this believes that there is no one at Apple who runs or owns a Windows machine, smartphone, xbox, or whose lives are never ever touched by any MS product? More importantly, don't you want us (in Redmond) to learn from obvious examples of excellent product design? Of course, we all have to be extremely careful about IP. But those concerns are orthogonal to the idea that inspiration is, itself, a virus worth passing to your friends and neighbors.
* * *
So, coming back to the first question: "why is there an OSX box stapled to the wall in the hall outside my office ?" Here's one more shorter answer: last year, I went to the Apple store and bought a G5 with my own money. I use a Mac at home for my own music work. I've been recording music on Apple machines since 1992. I also work in parallel on music on Windows machines. I live in both worlds. Until late 2001, there was not sufficient will (read: defensible business justification) within MS to address Windows audio and video performance, quality, fidelity, latency. We are now in a different landscape.
In my self-acknowledged, kool-aid driven view, it is the beginning of new era for Windows Audio and Video. Perhaps more precisely, it is also the beginning of a new era for Windows users (consumers, prosumers, and pros) who wish to work and play with audio and video in their daily lives. Certainly, we also still have a long, long way to go. Perhaps, not as long as we think if you believe Ray Kurzweil. But what a great time to be alive and working in this medium.
* * *
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I'll keep it simple. Thank you! I hope it
can be kept separate, i.e. Music/Windows/Nonfictions/Programs all have sound
controls. That would be great!
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I don't see how this is an operating system "problem" that needs to be resolved by a specialized design team. Why not just put a volume control in every application? A new mail sound isn't a "system notification," it's a sound that is played by Outlook. Just put a volume control in Outlook. It seems like all the extra sliders and the syncronization, the meters and etc. would be more confusing to a user than a simple individual volume control slider.
"One little thing can solve an incredibly big problem."
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He said that they were hoping to win the approval of the pro audio industry. As someone with experience in the field, I can say that I won't be completely satisfied until I can attain complete control over each application's audio, as in, like a sound board. I want to be able to mix, equalize, and channel every apps audio. Hi's, Lo's, Mid's, Surround fading, master EQ, even monitor channel output would make me one happy camper.
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LOL i saw OS X Tiger box in the video
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Putting a slider in each app:
a) is not practical - does not work for legacy apps, and certainly would never be done in a 'discoverable' way in all apps that make sound
b) would be confusing because app volume controls are not standardized - where do users look for slider and mute control in 10,000 different apps that make sound?
c) does not actually solve the real problem this UI solves: quick mixing of levels between apps that are currently playing sound -- this design enables two simple problem solving scenarios in one, easy to find, always-on place in the Windows desktop: set 'Windows Sounds' level relative to the other app that is playing audio, and 'set App A level compared to App B' level.
* * *
We occaisionally hear about users who claim to regularly use more than two or three apps at a time that are all simultaneously playing audio. This UI is not designed for fringe cases where users are playing audio consistently from more than 2 or 3 apps at once (ex. someone who needs a professional mixing console.)
This UI is meant to be a quick means of solving common 'desktop' volume problems in real time without requiring apps to 'opt in' or do anything -- Vista does the heavy lifting to make it easy for even novices to quickly customize the relative level settings between apps.
* * *
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I've quite amazed by the new audio stack,
though,I miss :
* to be able to output to my both soundcards at the same time ( thinking about playing same music for different rooms connected to speakers and HIFI amplifier )
* use a per display based sound config so if I move wmp on my video projector it outputs on the hifi amp and if wmp is on my lcd screen, the sounds pops out of desktop speakers.
* Control of surround (PRO LOGIC 2, AC3) so I can get the center chan on center when I'm using spdif output with my audigy 2 zs (no ac3 live encoding) or the nforce live ac3 encoding. Though I'm not sure it's windows dependant.
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Steve, it's really exciting to me that you and the team at Microsoft are so committed to making Windows work better for those of us making music. (I don't like to say "pro audio", necessarily, because the weekend musician also wants reliable, plug-and-play, low-latency audio performance.)
I'm still unclear on many things, however.
1. Will we be able to use WDM drivers on Vista and give up ASIO, or will we still need ASIO drivers for music work?
2. Will that require new drivers? What happens to our existing drivers?
3. Will Vista finally offer inter-application audio and/or MIDI without third-party software?
4. Will app levels and/or profiles (or whatever they're called) impact audio apps, so we could, say, easily mute other parts of the OS and running apps to avoid beeps sounding over our mix?
5. Will plug-and-play finally work right for MIDI and audio devices, or will we still experience the bugs we have in XP, where XP "forgets" USB MIDI keyboards and audio interfaces, runs into an arbitrary limit on the number of available devices in the Registry because of legacy support, etc.? (I'm not saying that very well, but I think you know what I'm talking about.)
To be honest, the last point for me has been the deal-killing annoyance of XP. Once you install ASIO drivers, at least, XP does work for music production, but having to constantly reinstall drivers every time I plug in a USB MIDI keyboard gets pretty frustrating.
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I should add, if you're unable to answer those questions, here's another way of putting it:
What should we go try to test / break / abuse in Vista beta 2? I've got a machine all ready to find bugs. What *should* we be able to try at this point, and what would your team like to know from Windows-based digital musicians?
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very good question,Peter Kirn.
i've recently know about your site "CDM" and now you can count me as CDM Fan form Thailand.
i run website similar to your site www.passionsound.com in my native language and Thank to your useful resource. 
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In Vista, is there a way to programmatically or through the registry set the sound device for playback . In XP, you could set the SoundMapper registry setting “Playback” key to the name of the device you wanted the program to use as long as you set it before program startup. Once the program started, you could set the “Playback” key to a different device and have all the other applications use that device. This helps keep sound secluded for recording audio calls and things of that nature.
The only caveat is that you couldn’t use the mmsys.cpl to reset the device otherwise the program would default back to the device you set it back to once the program stopped outputting audio.
Does anyone know if there is a registry key or a programmatic way (as long as it doesn't reset all other applications to that device) in Vista that will do the same thing as in XP?
Thanks,
John
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I actually stumbled upon this video whilest searching for a solution to my nightmare that is the volume in media center.
Nice to hear that things are moving along in the volume control arena, however, I cant for the life of me get the right volume to work in media center. Everything in windows is turned to low, however the volume remains loud in media center, and mutes as soon as the level goes below '6'. No idea how to fix this... tried two different sound cards and the last 3 beta releases, same issue.
Using the volume slider in media player works perfectly however. Very wierd, I am not sure where to set the volume at an application level, or if the volume in media center controls the speaker volume. Anyway, nice to get an insiders view from the devs on what lies in the future, keep up the good work...
now im going to spend the next few hours playing with every volume slider I can find.... 
Cheers,
-Damian
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Nice to hear the kernel mixer has been completely rewritten. It was a real headache trying to run a voip application against it.
As a voice-engineer responsible for the voice-engine within popular voip products like voipbuster and other Finerea related voip products I would like to know the following:
What API should I use to finally match the microphone and speakersignals correctly, having the lowest latency and minimized drift of those signals?
As for now it's a real "pain in the ..." to match speakersignals with microphone signals. The way we did it with the wavein/out api and a lot of "measurement" code around it, does not work under vista. It seems the DMA size used has been increased instead of lowered???
Please help me out on taking the right direction as not to waste a lot of time trying to figure out which way to go. For this type of pc-based applications you must have a certain API or framework in mind which we should use. We think we have one of the best Echo cancelation voice-engines with an unbeatable double talk performance in desktop speaker/microphone environments in the market today and would like to keep it that way!
Regards,
Martien.
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I am sure these guys are no longer watching these posts, but we shall see.
My question is this;
In Windows XP we had a "WAVE and SW Synth" control. How are they controlled now?
I use FRAPS to create video of games and have found it to fail dramaticlly since it will not record the sound. I have tried using Audacity and the Vista sound recorder, nothing! I am going to submit this and see if the bug boys hear me.
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I just found this on the web. Very cool video with a large amount of cool information.
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So if nobody is supposed to know this has changed, unless something
goes wrong, then I have to say; something is wrong. Right now I'm
watching this video, while evaluating vista, arguably my weak point
might be my beta creative xi-fi drivers. Regardless, the audio is very
choppy. The last time I experienced this issue was on my IBM T23 laptop
while listening to music through Winamp. Then, it was related to the
processor having to deal with continually having to process the audio
stream and do other tasks at the same time (A 1ghz PIII processor can
only handle so much). At the time the reason I supposed this was the
culprit was because playback quality would decrease when CPU usage went
up. For the most part I remedied the situation by increasing the
directsound buffer in Winamp.
Fast forward six years and I find myself in the same situation, I feel
like I'm on my T23 again. Stuttering audio is coming out of my PC.
My experience with the previous situation was what gave me the idea
that I might have a problem with the buffer in this situation as well.
I hope my processor is not the problem as I have an Opteron 170. I also
have 2gb of pc400 dual channel ram. So what is the problem? Creative
and the beta drivers? Possibly. Or could it be the fact that processes
that were once hardware based are now being handled by software? If
anything I see this as a step backwards. Sure individual volume control
is a great idea, but my system is now stuttering and running into what
I believe are buffer issues as a result.
I'm also led to believe this is a buffer based issue because under the
advanced tab in 'Speakers Properties,' when I change the default format
of the sample rate to anything above 16bit DVD Quality, I get a serious
impact on the quality of the sound, in Winamp. It sounds exactly like
the stuttering I ran into years before. Also, when I change the default
format while Winamp is playing, I run into this:
Error creating the DirectSound buffer.
Error code: 88780096
When I do the same thing in Windows Media Player, I get this:
An audio device was disconnected or reconfigured. Verify that the audio
device is connected, and then try to play the item again.
An interesting thing, however, is that WMP is not affected by the
stuttering issue when I select any setting in the Studio Quality range.
I love WMP 11, it is awesome in XP. But for some reason, in Vista, it
does not want to recognize 99% of the music I have in my monitored
folders. I have to drag the folder into the player for it to recognize
all my music. This defeats the purpose of the monitored folder, but
thats another issue. I prefer to use Winamp.
I suppose my final question is, if the original audio stack in Windows
was so bad, that they required a rewrite, why remove directsound
capability, when it was working so smoothly in XP and previous
iterations of Windows? Why move something that was hardware-based off
of the hardware that was intended for that very purpose? My CPU was not
meant to directly process sound, that is what my sound card is for
(right?). I know OpenAL (owned by Creative) is out there (it's doing
its thing on my PC right now) but its capabilities are far behind
anything Creative's EAX was capable of. Again, why take a step
backwards (in some respects) by only supporting OpenAL? If anything
it's like going from WindowsXP to Windows 3.1, in terms of the features
and level of support both by the original manufacturer but more
importantly, the community at large. More games and media players
support directsound and EAX as opposed to OpenAL. I do not have any
concrete numbers on the fact, but I would be very surprised if the case
is otherwise. Yet in solving one problem, which is rather cool and
laudable; another, much larger one, has been created. If given the
option, I think users should be able to choose between the new software
sound layer and the older directsound method. To my understanding, the
new software layer is intended to address problems not related to game
sound quality and music player output using directsound, right? To be
honest I do not care about how loud my system notifications are in
relationship to other sounds on my computer. I want my hardware to do
what I bought it to do, and right now that is not the case.
N.B. Here's what happened in order for me to finish writing this post:
I paused the video while it was minimized on my taskbar, as the WMP
toolbar, so I could finish writing the rest of the first and second
paragraph. I was ~18:36 into the video when I decided to start it up
again. After a few minutes of what I would consider normal buffering,
the video started to play...without audio. At the time I also had
winamp open, so I tried to play the song I was listening to before I
started the video... no dice. Winamp refused to output sound. What
happened next was what I can only describe as a "genuine windows
experience." Firefox, probably through my use of the Foxytunes plugin,
froze. By this time I realized that I had no sound comming out of my
PC. I closed WMP, Winamp, and Firefox (I took a screen shot of what I
had been writing). Upon trying to close Firefox, after it was busy for
a few minutes, I received this error (I like the new error dialogs by
the way):
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangXProcB1
Application Name: firefox.exe
Application Version: 1.8.20061.20418
Application Timestamp: 4574e7e3
Hang Signature: 9047
Hang Type: 32
Waiting on Application Name: winamp.exe
Waiting on Application Version: 5.2.0.473
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 205baa1b39d9b98ad8f4095165e02e 11
Additional Hang Signature 2: fad6
Additional Hang Signature 3: dcb3d33a2b50e0211f39e701ce7e08 68
Additional Hang Signature 4: 9047
Additional Hang Signature 5: 205baa1b39d9b98ad8f4095165e02e 11
Additional Hang Signature 6: fad6
Additional Hang Signature 7: dcb3d33a2b50e0211f39e701ce7e08 68
Like it says it was waiting on Winamp, but Winamp was not playing music
and neither was WMP so I closed them. Long story short I got sound back
by clicking the 'Configure' button on the 'Sound' control panel and
testing the stereo setup. On the plus side I didn't have to restart,
but then again, how many end users will be that deductive to try all
these steps in figuring out why their computer will not make any noise?
I'm going to make this post and finish watching the video. If anything
is further explained, I'll update my post as necessary.
Edit:
Spell checked and finished the video. Apparently I was only aroun 12mins into the movie. I like these video it makes the whole OS creation process seem more personable. Instead of "only supporting" I should correct myself in saying only allowing OpenAL and ASIO direct access to the hardware layer. On that note though, I cannot remember the last time my sound card caused my computer to crash as the result of kernel mode access. This is part of a larger initiative (right?), removing things from the kernel that do not need access to the kernel? I'm thinking about the antivirus companies here.
Thinking about per-app volume control (volume mixer) I doubt many of my peers will ever notice it. They just want their programs to work. If fidelity is such a strong belief, then why are S/PDIF and YPbPr disabled when "premium content" is played? That does not sound like much of a commitment to consumers who have invested in those technologies. But thats entirely another can of worms. Right now I'm using Winamp and its glitchy. I'm not happy. I'm concerned.
Edit 2:
24 hours to let it stew and think it over. I suppose it's a Xi-Fi problem, but more specifically it seems like it's a directsound plugin issue with Winamp. Still, when listening to music, CPU usage is higher than in XP, I suppose that's my main concern, as well as the overall change. I guess I'll get used to it but I really wish the change was seamless as opposed to me being able to notice a difference. Audiodg.exe is main source of my concern. I suppose this is the software doing its job? Usage decreases when I stay at standard quality as opposed to going into studio quality, but again... I guess I'm just trying to get my mind around it and I really wish there were drivers that were available now (I know, I know) that would make it work just the way it did in XP. And that's where I bark up Creative's tree (wish me luck on that one...). I'm also slightly anxious about all the content protection I've read thats been built into Vista. I want the same functionality, with an increase in quality, without having to replace perfectly good hardware because it does not handle encrypted signals. I guess I ask too much. Kudos to all your work, it is good, but right now I'm concerned because there are some big questions looming on the horizon about content protection and the costs and quality issues associated therein.
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One thing I am noticing right away with this new controls system is that I can't turn off the microphone playback. This is annoying since I really don't need or want to hear myself in my headphones as I chat VOIP or on Teamspeak. This may just be a problem with the X-Fi beta drivers, but as I recall the disable playback was in the Windows mixers. Then again maybe I'm missing it.
While in theory I think the individual application volume settings are a neat idea, so far nothing works with them and it is just an exercise in frustration at this point. I'll reserve final judgment on the new audio for a few more weeks or months, but right now I'm looking forward to the patch that gives me an option to disable it.
EDIT - Found the mute button for mike playback under the Levels tab under Speaker Properties.
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Ok, i just bought a brand new computer and put windows vista on it
I am using the program Ventrilo and i cannot use a microphone to talk, in a short question how do i use a microphone with ventrilo in windows vista. I can hear in this program but i cant talk.. please help im getting frustrated 
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