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.
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 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.
gramps