Volume Control: "spatial" keeps setting itself

Hi all

problem more annoying than severe:

On the advanced settings for the volume control, there's a checkbox called "Spatial" - which now insists upon coming up checked every time I boot up.

I've recently reinstalled everything and for a while this setting would "remember" it's previous state like I'm sure it should - but something has now stopped it doing this, it now always comes back turned on after a reboot.

I wish it wouldn't! (use the PC for sound a lot) - of course I can keep turning it off every time - but I would like to have some sort of explanation for what's happened.

I'm only guessing here but I think it started this annoying habit when I used Media Player to (try to) view a video clip, I was blessed with a download of some sort of Microsoft update, and now wish I had payed more attention. Even "updated ", the thing didn't work - it crashed - had to CtrlAltDel it to close it. Rebooted, tried again, same thing. The file was a WMV file. This PC has no MMX support - in case that matters. I very rarely use video and can do without it if this is what is mucking things up.

Also useful would be if anyone can suggest a way I could make a startup task to turn the thing off automatically, I would like to learn how to do that type of thing. But ideally I would like to identify what causes this, to avoid doing it again. Also I suspect that whatever causes this may be causing other problems, from what has happened in the past. (long story)

The sound card is by Ensoniq, uses very normal drivers by Creative. Works very well when the pesky "Spatial" thing is disabled.

In a week or so I will be able to rebuild all the software again, can then try to narrow it down better. Meanwhile, if anyone has any ideas of the sort of thing I'm looking for, it would be a great help.

Best Wishes & Good Luck, Hugh.

 

In the file win.ini , section [mci extensions]
what do you have ?
regards

 

Hi merlin

thanks for taking an interest on such a trivial annoyance... but it's got me going and I would like to know a cause if poss.

I'm afraid that I may have obliterated what you're after as, getting fed up with it, I reinstalled the Creative drivers to work a (OK temporary) cure. But anyway, here's the info:

[mci extensions]
mid=Sequencer
rmi=Sequencer
wav=waveaudio
avi=AVIVideo
cda=CDAudio
aif=MPEGVideo
aiff=MPEGVideo
aifc=MPEGVideo
au=MPEGVideo
m1v=MPEGVideo
mov=MPEGVideo
mp2=MPEGVideo
mpa=MPEGVideo
mpe=MPEGVideo
mpeg=MPEGVideo
mpg=MPEGVideo
qt=MPEGVideo
snd=MPEGVideo
dat=MPEGVideo
midi=Sequencer
asf=MPEGVideo2
asx=MPEGVideo2
ivf=MPEGVideo2
m3u=MPEGVideo
mp3=MPEGVideo
mpv2=MPEGVideo
mp2v=MPEGVideo
wax=MPEGVideo2
wvx=MPEGVideo2
wm=MPEGVideo2
wma=MPEGVideo2
wmv=MPEGVideo2

[MCICompatibility]
QTWVideo=0x0001
MCIXSND=0x0001
GDAnim=0x0001

and there's nothing under [mciavi]

Having reinstalled the drivers I checked to see whather the thing would remember "Spatial: On" through a reboot and it won't. Now, it always comes up turned off. (sorry I got that wrong in the earlier post - just assumed that it would be remembered as so many of the other Windows settings are)

"Off" suits me fine - there's all sorts of settings for headphones and various speaker layouts; what I'm after is plain and simple, left channel out of the left, right out of the right. No crosstalk, antiphase crosstalk, or any fancy time-domain stuff like reverb or particularly this "Spatial" biz. I just want straight audio! (please!)

I shall try and check more regularly to see if I can narrow it down any better - was rather hoping someone would jump in with "That's happened to me and..." sort of thing...

Very Best Wishes, Hugh.

 

Hugh, are you referring to the standard Windows Volume Control
Window, or a settings program that came with the sound card ?
I have no "spatial" in the Win standard volume program.
The only difference I have in win.ini is
mpv=mpegVideo
which you do not have - but I do not think this has much to do
with your problem.
regards and keep trying ...

 

Hi merlin

I run \WINDOWS\SNDVOL32.EXE to produce a window with the title "Volume Control ".

to get to the "Spatial" option I hit the "Advanced" button which is at the bottom of the LH column which is titled Volume Control...

[I need to have [show] "Advanced Controls" set to on using the Volume Control's Options menu to see this button]

...which raises another window which has tone controls for treble and bass, and also "Other options ", the only choice in the "other" section is this "Spatial" option.

I'm not at all sure how much of this last bit is still to do with SNDVOL32.EXE though - the options you get perhaps change depending upon what sort of sound setup it is - and also I seem to remember a similar window on another PC actually growing more bits when I changed the drivers. Hence the long-winded description above in case yours doesn't look the same.

I'm rather wondering if these "advanced options" work a bit like a plug-in to the windows volume control, so you only see the ones the card is capable of? ...in which case it might be more to do with Creative than Windows.

I'd thought it to be A Windows thing as I had thought that it started when the video clip crashed - and crashed hard... but now I'm not at all sure.

And, reinstalling the drivers fixes (at least put back) the boot-up default. But its not as if the spatial option ever ceases to function, just that it's power-up state reverses

The reinstall I did using the Creative "web update" package. Hard to know precisely what it does but it looks pretty thorough, you get screens popping up saying "new hardware found" so I'd guess it's ripped out the old, put it all in afresh and presumably rewritten any registry entries? It does it all on autopilot...

I'll see if I can find any other INI files or similar with likely names...

Best Wishes, Hugh.

 

Hugh,
I have sndvol32.exe, size 69.632, version 4.10.1999, date 23.04.1999.
It does not show an "Advanced" button in the LH side.
The only advanced tab I have is under the Microphone column and
I have no "spatial" stuff there of course.
I do have down on the very bottom line of the main window
"DS-XG" which the model of my Yamaha Sound Card.
To me, the significant point here is that my/your installed
sound card drivers can also modify what you can see and do with sndvol32.exe.
"Spatial" seems to be referring to some speaker settings (?)
I still suspect your sound card drivers as the causeof the problem
regards

 

Yes, they are put there by your sound card drivers. If you look in the mixer control that comes with the sound card you'll see them there also. I have an SB Live card and it too, puts the advanced button there though all I have in it are treble and bass controls and an option to use digital audio only. If you have an advanced button under the microphone control it too is put there when you install your sound card. Not everybody will have these as it depends on what kind of sound card you have.

 

Zander,
Interesting topic that I've never had reason to look into before.
The questions are now, in what form do the Sound Card drivers
make the modifications ? Do different SC manufacturers use
different ways to make the modifications ?
I do not know the answers at the moment.
As Hugh says, there may be an .ini that he can modify.
regards

 

Well, I guess I can't really help in that regard as I'm not a programmer; so..... I doubt that's it's put there by way of an ini file however. More likely that it's done by way of registry entries written at the time of the driver installation. Never have tried to find out how it's done as I don't have any desire to lose my bass and treble controls. I could be wrong however. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

Hi all

I've done a good bit of rootling - some answers - unfortunately not the ones I wanted to discover, in many ways:

merlin: my sndvol32.exe is older than yours but I don't think that's relevant to what we're after; where the details of your DS-XG appear I have SB AudioPCI Mixer

it appears that the information which decides which controls you see and which are hidden is most probably indeed in the registry. I tried altering the setup, rebooting, then listing all ini files ordered by date to try to spot a salient change. Not found.

similar exports of the registry for before/after comparison (with fc) showed changes, a subset of which presumably included these settings. However the registry entries which had altered were not string variables - they were long collections of single hex bytes with no clear indication to significance or anything else remotely helpful. I think its in the registry but pretty well buried...

there's other things involved as well though I suspect - using multimedia properties one can select which input and output devices Volume Control uses - I have another wave device lurking in the "speakerphone" modem (useless quality OK but its a wave device nonetheless) - I think this changes what you can see on the mixer also. Will try soon... been rather busy discovering something awful:

I discovered that in the little "prodding" which I had done I had somehow managed to get the thing into its "Spatial=On" mode. No video clips involved. All I had done was to Unhide and Hide the line input slider on the mixer, and fiddle with the mutes for the CD and line channels.

(note: reinstalling the drivers afresh everywhen it might have mattered, attempting to be methodical!)

It turns out that a sufficient condition to cause the "Spatial=On" behaviour was to mute the line input. Muting the CD channel does not cause it, however.

Now, it gets really bad.

Reinstalling the drivers unchecks all the mute checkboxes. It doesn't hide or unhide the channels as one can do using the properties menu, if they wre showing they stay showing. But it does set them all "live" ie unmuted. I really want to mute the CD and line input channels - of course. All I am trying to achieve is a "straight" output from the "Wave" channel, without mutilation if possible.

So I tested to find out whether sound from a hidden channel would come though... and most wretchedly, it does. This is lethal. Getting what you are not seeing...

So I'm stuck with: if I reinstall the drivers it unmutes the inputs that I need muted. Any attempt to mute these inputs leaves me with "Spatial=On" and everything sounds like it's in a bathtub.

Thus what I have to do from boot is
<CtrlEsc>,S,C (for control panel)
End, Up, Left (at multimedia by now on my PC)
Return, Tab, Tab, Spacebar (Volume control for playback by this point)
Tab, Tab, Tab, Spacebar (Advanced properties)
Alt1 (the Alt1 turns the Spatial bathtub off)
then close the relevant windows...

of course I can do this every time, I'm getting quite used to it by now. But hang on - isn't this the sort of thing that a computer should be able to do on its own - like, follow a sequence of instructions? particularly one which has a StartUp group.

Thing is I don't know where to start. It's a but like writing a macro I suppose - I'm not too bad in good old C but would need to spoof it so that my bytes are getting injected where the keyboard's would usually go... if I could do that, it would be easy.

I've never got the hang of Visual Basic - newfangled object-oriented languages baffle me... somehow I have a horrible feeling this is about to change.

Any ideas, please, good people? Surely to goodness this should not be too hard a thing to do?

With very best wishes to all, (rather frazzled) Hugh.
(sorry it's so long)

 

Hugh,
I think if I were in your situation, I would install a new and different type of soundcard.
Here, they are only about 20 USD.
I have the feeling you will be losing a lot of your time otherwise
(and that will cost more than 20 USD)
I haven't found anything usable in the reg, but of course, I have a different kit.
Maybe you have a sound chip on your mobo ? Most modern one's have, which can be jumpered in/out. My ASUS board has this feature. That may save you the expense of a new card.
If not, and you decide to buy a new SC, I can recommend
the Yamaha DS-XG types. The sound quality is excellent.
regards

 

Hi all

merlin, there is much truth in what you say, particularly as were I to get a new sound card, I could be reasonably sure that I get the correct drivers for it...

I had to go through the process of identifying my current one from the registry, PCI vendor, device, subsystem codes...

...then discovered that Ensoniq had been ?bought out by Creative, or at least their sound card deparment has - I think Ensoniq still make synths...

...so have never been really sure about the suitability of the drivers. But it sounds fine, apart from this stupid problem with an unwanted function...

I don't think there is a sound chip on this motherboard - it's an old Compaq 100MHz; I will look see next time I have it open. To my shame I have never thought to investigate thus far...

**edit ** I don't thing there an onboard sound section, as there are no sockets on the back, internal speakers or the like (apart from the "beep" speaker)...
An internet trawl found "WinKeySim" (freeware, looks quite good on first impression) which very nearly does what's needed. It produces (replayes saved) "keystrokes" - like a macro - but does not seem able to initiate a task, you have to hit the Start button... there may be a way it can do it but I gave up
**

I have managed to effect a workaround; getting fed up with it I decided that the only thing to do was to learn (!) a bit of VB, and after a few hours of intensive hair-pulling-out have managed to come up with "bathplug.exe" which runs as a startup task now, specifically to cancel the spatial function. Not perfect by any means yet, at the moment I am totally baffled as to how to close the window it leaves automatically. It does nobble the spatial function though...

I'm progressing at a rate of knots though: only two hours into learning VB and I've already managed to produce one of those pesky taskbar buttons without any writing on it! (that was my first attempt to get the window to self-close)

Just think what results another few hours might produce...

In a week or so I will be rebuilding W98 (it might perhaps be sooner than that if I continue trying to "learn" VB...) at which point I want to try something: when I put W98 on "afresh" - I'll be going for the cleanest install I can - I want to see how Volume Control comes up before I have installed the drivers for either the sound card or the modem. Believing that there's no sound kit on the actual motherboard I wonder what functions it will manage to find? And, will the line input (if present) appear muted or non-muted?

Could see quite a few possibilities there. Windows will try to produce sounds by default - they'll surely have made in try to install that way to show off / confirm functionality of sound gear if present. But what if there's no wave out device there at all? Perhaps a default beep?

I shall post back the results - might be a bit more than a week but I will be doing it soonish...

Good Luck all...
Phew, Hugh.