Generator Volume Slider Dialog

Macros: VolMastL,R; VolWaveL,R; VolMastTrk; VolWaveTrk

This dialog opens when you hit the small 'Vol' button between the Left and Right volume controls. (If you have calibrated your system and Use dB is set, the Vol button will be replaced with 'dB' to open the dB Slider dialog.)

The top controls apply to the Master attenuators, and the bottom controls to the Wave attenuators. Above each slider is a conventional edit control, plus a grey readout box. The Wave edit control mirrors the main Volume edit control and also serves as a numeric readout of the slider setting.

As with the main Volume edit control, these settings are simply mixer step numbers. Zero is loudest, and the steps move in integer values down from there. All non-zero values are negative, but you don't need to supply the sign if entering manually instead of via the slider.

Note that although a typical sound card may have only 16 or 32 steps on its attenuators, Windows inflates this (usually to 192) by adding a lot of dummy steps to give more apparent resolution... even though nothing changes when you move among the dummy steps.

Between each pair of sliders is a single Track button. When it is activated, moving either the Left or Right slider or edit control will cause the other channel to take the same setting.

Master Track is separate from Wave Track, which allows a handy way to keep a constant balance between channels while changing the overall volume. You set either Master or Wave to Track, and set the Left-Right balance on the non-tracking pair of controls. Now as you adjust the tracking controls, perfect balance is maintained.

Note that the standard Windows Mixer balance controls (which you typically activate by right-clicking on the little speaker icon in the system tray) can only provide a crude approximation of true balance tracking for their respective vertical sliders. This is because the true mixer step sizes are typically not constant and their actual attenuation amounts are unknown to the Windows Mixer. The best it can do is maintain a constant step difference, which will cause a shift in the balance while traversing an attenuator region where the step sizes change. (To maintain true balance in the Windows Mixer, you must operate as described above, and set the overall balance on Wave, for example, while keeping Master centered.)

In the Daqarta Generator Volume Slider dialog, the litle grey readout box below the edit controls atop each slider will only be active if the attenuators have been calibrated. The edit controls still accept only step numbers, but you can see the effective dB attenuation in the readouts. This is very convenient since (due to Windows inserting so many dummy steps) you otherwise may not know if a given step change has actually done anything.

Normally, you will probably want to use the dB slider dialog when your attenuators are calibrated. But you can tell Daqarta to ignore the calibration by setting Use Vol Steps instead of Use dB. In that case the main Generator dialog button will be labeled 'Vol' and it will pop up this dialog, with the readout boxes showing dB on calibrated lines.

You might want to do this just to get separate Wave and Master controls. One reason might be if you are using the sound card's built in synthesizer as well as the Daqarta Generator. That way you can get independent control of each component; with Use dB the dB slider dialog would use both Wave and Master together, and when it changed Master the Synth Volume would change as well.

Macro Notes:

Note that the following macro commands assume that Use Vol Steps is active. If not, the macro will abort with an error message. To be safe, give a UseCal=Vsteps command before using these.

VolMastL=6 sets the Left Master Volume step to -6. Note that 0 is loudest, and all entered values are assumed negative. (If you enter a sign, it is ignored.)

Alternatively, VolMastL=>1 will make the Left Master Volume one step louder (less negative) and VolMastL=>-1 will make it one step softer (more negative).

In a similar manner, use VolMastR for the Right Master Volume, VolWaveL for Left Wave Volume, and VolWaveR for Right Wave Volume.

VolMastTrk=1 turns on Master Track mode, VolMastTrk=0 turns it off, and VolMastTrk=x toggles between on and off. VolWaveTrk works the same way for Wave Track.

See also Generator Volume/dB Slider Button Attenuator Calibration, Signal Generator Control Dialog