MIC's device name was the only header label at full-strength OnSurface (it was brightened
because it shows a choice), and the lip-sync reading was Tertiary — three different values
across four bays in the same row. All four header labels are now Brush.OnSurfaceVariant, the
standard secondary-text token. No other colours touched.
Every bay is now header / ladder / controls. Lip-sync has no ladder, so it holds an empty 20px
row (10px meter + the two margins) that keeps its slider exactly level with the other three,
and MIC's ladder gained the missing 4px bottom margin that had its slider sitting 4px high.
Presets stay under the slider in the narrow lip-sync bay.
Not under it: the offset slider now rides the header line beside the LIP-SYNC badge and the
reading, and the preset row is what stays below. The box is narrow, so a slider on its own line
was the only thing making it two-and-a-bit rows tall.
GenerateBuildStamp read BuildCounter.txt, added 1 and wrote it back on every CoreCompile, so
the number tracked BUILDS: a day of iteration reached #1122 against 563 commits. It now uses
git rev-list count of HEAD, which is what the comment always claimed (and why the file existed
in .gitignore). No counter file, no drift; a missing git still falls back to the start.
Also moves the MIC and lip-sync volume bars up one line: both were pinned to the floor of their
bay by a star row plus VerticalAlignment=Bottom. They now sit directly under their headers,
with the auto rows sized to content.
Capping the three bay meters at 320px and left-aligning them made each ladder look cut off
mid-bay, which is what the creator saw as deleted bars. The caps are gone; the master ladder
keeps its own 420-900px range so it stays the longest without shortening anything else.
The master meter was a fixed 420px, but each sound bay's ladder fills its column — on a wide
window a bay could be longer than the master, which is the opposite of what was asked.
Master now stretches between 420 and 760 px, and the three bay ladders cap at 320 with the same
cap for each, so they stay the same relative size to one another and stay shorter than the
master at every window width.
Creator rulings, 2026-11-01.
- Master strip is 44px (from 36) and its meter is now the largest on screen: 420x14 with 32
segments, centred under the preview, with a 12px MASTER label — bigger than the 9px bay
labels. L/R imbalance is a flag on the left, MONO and the session clock on the right.
- The kbps / fps / dropped counters are gone from that line: the live readouts already sit
above the preview, and the duplicate was noise rather than telemetry.
- TRAX is its own bay (MIC | GAME | TRAX | LIP-SYNC) with its own meter bound to
TraxMeterFraction. It lived inside the game bay with no ladder, which meant whether the bed
was actually playing could not be answered from the dock — and the player already measures
its own output.
- Lip-sync is narrow (0.45 star) since it is one slider and three presets; the three sound bays
are equal width, so their meters keep the same relative size.
AudioDockLayout moves with it (156 = 112 + 44; collapsed 44) and the layout test is updated.
TraxBayTests now asserts the opposite of the old ruling: the bay HAS a meter, and the game bay
no longer carries it.
Creator ruling (2026-10-30): TRAX is background music and is controlled separately from desktop and
mic — so KISS it:
- TRAX loses its own ladder and slider. It is one number plus ±5 dB buttons, disabled at the ends
(−60 dB floor, +6 dB ceiling).
- It STARTS at −50 dB, taken from the creator's own meter readings, and moves in 5 dB clicks. If that
proves inaudible on their setup, six clicks lands at −20 — the buttons exist for exactly that, and
`TraxDefaultDb` is one constant.
- Layout follows: Desktop's volume now sits directly beneath its ladder, and the TRAX row (name,
play/pause, level) sits beneath that, inside the GAME bay. The bays are MIC | GAME+TRAX | LIP-SYNC.
- The metering tap on the player stays (it is how "is the music producing sound" is answered) but has
no ladder of its own; the desktop bed already shows the music.
Guards updated: TraxBayTests now asserts the stepper wiring and that the row has NO SegmentMeter;
GameBayTests asserts the desktop fader sits below the desktop ladder.
TRAX is not a separate bus: it plays through the default output device and WASAPI loopback taps
that device, so the music genuinely is in the desktop bed — the Desktop ladder moving with a track
is correct, not a leak. The bay now says so on the label and in a tooltip, because two moving
ladders for one sound invites exactly this question.
No behaviour change: routing stays right (the stream hears the music once, via loopback).
Creator: "why is there no meter for when trax is playing?"
Routing answer: TRAX rides the desktop loopback, so it already moved the GAME ladder — there was no
separate TRAX signal in the mix. But that ladder cannot answer the question a deaf creator actually
has: "is the music producing sound at all?" The play glyph cannot either — an open file with a dead
decoder still reports Playing.
So the player now measures its own output: \`MusicPlayer\` wraps the volume stage in an NAudio
\`MeteringSampleProvider\` and exposes \`Level\`; \`ITraxPlayer.Level\` keeps the fake honest. The VM maps
it through the same display scale (\`TraxMeterFraction\`), zeroed when not playing, and the TRAX bay
carries a 24-segment ladder above its fader.
This reverses my earlier "no ladder, nothing honest to show" — the honest thing arrived with a real
measurement. TraxBayTests flipped accordingly (it now asserts the ladder AND its source).
Unit 9, the one that matters most for this creator.
MASTER STRIP (top, nearest the preview):
- one ladder fed by the MEASURED mix — `AudioMixer` now measures the buffer the encoder receives
(`MasterLevel`, `MasterImbalanceDb`), so the master cannot show a source instead of the output
- `-12.4 dB` readout, and ONE L/R flag that appears above a 6 dB gap instead of a second ladder
- bitrate / FPS / dropped / duration from the existing health poll
MONO OUTPUT:
- `AudioFold.ToMono` averages each stereo pair into both channels, applied after the limiter and
the sync delay, so the stream AND the recording get what was folded
- `MonoOutput` is persisted (`Audio.MonoOutput`) and restored at startup: an accessibility switch
that resets each session is an accessibility failure
- one click in the strip, remembered forever
Guard: AudioFoldTests (hard-left reaches the right at half amplitude, hard-right — the inaudible
case — reaches the left, centred material keeps its level, mono buffers untouched) and
MasterStripTests (the strip binds the measured mix + the switch, the store round-trips it, and the
fold is the tested helper rather than new arithmetic). 33 audio tests green.
Unit 8. Re-houses the shipped TASK 22 offset in the dock:
- slider −200…+200 ms, snapping to 5 ms ticks (the existing property still clamps and persists)
- readable readout: "0 ms (aligned)" when right, signed otherwise ("+50 ms", "−120 ms")
- presets 0 / +50 / +100; 0 IS the detent — a button is easier to hit than a snap, and "the lip-sync
is right" deserves one click.
Guard: SyncBayTests pins the binding, the readout, the presets and the snapping, and that the
offset stays the persisted property (no second source of truth).
Unit 7. The bay shows the track name (left-click toggles playback, right-click opens the picker —
the label stays the control), a play/pause button, the duck badge, and a dB level.
No ladder here, deliberately: nothing measures the music bed, and a decorative ladder would break
the measured-not-painted rule. A test asserts the bay has no SegmentMeter.
The level is real: `ITraxPlayer.UserGain` is a new creator gain multiplied onto the fixed design
volume, separate from `LocalGain` (which follows the desktop mute). The VM's `TraxVolumeDb` is the
same dB scale as the other faders, so unity means the bed's design level.
Unit 6. Mirrors the mic bay for the desktop/game bed, plus the badge that matters to a creator who
cannot hear the duck: it shows while the ducker is actually attenuating, and it prints the gain the
mixer applied (−12.0 DUCK by design).
- `AudioMixer.DuckGain` exposes `AutoDucker.CurrentGain` instead of leaving it internal.
- VM: `GameVolumeDb` / `GameVolumeDbLabel` (fader face), `GameMeterFraction` (measured level),
`IsGameDucking` + `GameDuckLabel` refreshed on the level tick — the same moment the ducker runs,
so the badge cannot lag behind the mix.
- The bay: header chip + source, ladder, mute dot (uses the meter band, so mute reads at a glance),
dB readout, fader.
Guard: GameBayTests — the dock binds all four, `AutoDucker.DuckGain` is −12.04 dB and the label is
produced through the same dB scale as the faders, and the mixer property exists so the badge cannot
become a hardcoded number.
Unit 5. The dock's first working bay:
- 24-segment ladder fed by `MicMeterFraction` — the MEASURED display level (already scaled by the
volume and zeroed when muted), never the gain setting.
- Fader in dB via `MicVolumeDb` (−60 … +6, 0 = unity) with a mono-weight readout
(`MicVolumeDbLabel`), so "−6.0 dB" is what the creator reads instead of "0.50".
- Mute button whose dot uses the existing MicStatusBrush; clicking the device name opens the mic
picker, so the label stays the control (the KISS rule: one place to change the mic).
The preview's own mic row stays for now — it is removed in the final unit, after the dock bays are
complete, so nothing is lost if a bay misbehaves.
Guard: MicBayTests — the bay binds the dB face and the measured level (not the gain), the fader
range IS the scale's range, the VM surface exists, and mute still zeroes the ladder.
During a live session attention sits on the preview, so the master sound bar belongs as close to it
as possible — master row first, the four bays below. Collapsed mode is unchanged: 36px is the
master strip on its own, so it stays exactly where the eye already is.
Unit 4 of the sound-bar refactor. `Controls/AudioDock` takes the bottom row that held the empty
`BottomBar` spacer (deleted): four bay containers (MIC / GAME / TRAX / LIP-SYNC) above a 36px
master strip, all token-styled.
Height comes from `Models/AudioDockLayout`, not from a setting: 168px normally, 36px below a 900px
window height. At the 1366×768 minimum a full dock leaves ~398px for the preview, so the collapse
is mandatory, not cosmetic. The dock listens to its window's SizeChanged and re-applies.
Nothing here pretends to be a meter yet — the bays and the master readouts fill in over the next
units, each with its own test.
Guard: AudioDockLayoutTests pins both sides of the threshold (768 collapsed, 1040 expanded), the
boundary itself, and the two heights as the design's numbers.
gramps