MaverickUK wrote on 2026-07-22, 10:47:
Also on the HDD Synth Win32 front, the latest release is available from https://github.com/MaverickUK/HDDSynth_Win32/ … ses/tag/v0.13.1
Some v0.13.1 feedback (tested on both win98se and winxpsp3):
- Settings dialog: Activity threshold slider now works (forgot to report this earlier but fixed nonetheless)
- I keep hearing random weird aggressively loud bursts of static, especially when experimenting with low latencies? Did something change that could have caused this?
- Audio buffering: the default value seems way too high, and why is the maximum value so huge? Surely nobody would ever be willing to wait 2 seconds before hearing their disk drive? (for giggles: if the hard drive was 700 meters away, admittedly there would be a ~2 second delay, also for reference, 50 meters away would mean ~145 ms of latency)
- I feel suspicious of the reported number of "glitches" per second, feels way too zealous and unhelpful to me, but I'm probably taking it too literally. When I seemed to find a suitable compromise between latency and disk sound quality, the dialog still reported dozens of glitches per second, even though my idle sounds were completely muted and nothing was happening at all, no sounds and no disk activity. Right now I find the glitchymeter too hard to interpret, and I don't want to have to live with e.g. 50-100+ ms of latency, no matter how "glitchy" it might be. Is there an unnecessarily tight loop playing in the background or something, and surely it at least does less work when the options dialog is closed?
- Please double-check that muting idle or activity sounds also actually disables the corresponding functionality completely, instead of still doing busywork and "playing" the sounds, just at zero volume
- Offer an option to reduce sound quality, for users who want low latency at all cost? Could there be "lite" versions of the sound files, does compression of caching help, any other tricks you can think of? I think low latency is super duper important (YOU may not have noticed it being slow, but your brain did)
- I would be feel more comfortable if the program just added a "dumb" normal shortcut in the Start / Programs / StartUp folder instead of whatever opaque thing "Run at Windows Startup" now does, especially since there is no uninstaller
- Suggestion: open the settings dialog if the user tries to launch the application again when it's already in the tray, the user is probably confused, and opening a competing instance is certainly the wrong thing to do here (use case: somebody can't or doesn't want to use the context menu, difficulty using the right mouse button or whatever but wants to access the settings dialog)
- Maybe even open the settings dialog automatically the first time the user opens the application (no settings file yet)?
- Also (or only?) put the hard drive model selection thing in the settings dialog, instead of (only) "hiding" it in the context menu? (if somebody can't or doesn't want to use the context menu)
- Also (or only?) put "Run at Windows Startup" in the settings dialog, instead of (only) "hiding" it in the context menu? (if somebody can't or doesn't want to use the context menu)
- Maybe also add an "Exit" button in the options menu, or would that clutter the dialog too much? (if somebody can't or doesn't want to use the context menu)
- More generally, why are some settings "hidden" in the right click menu and some are in the settings dialog? The choice seems pretty arbitrary? Just put everything in the same place? Also, icons are neat and all but they can be distracting: didn't Apple just start reducing the number of unnecessary icons in macOS menus in macOS 27 betas?
- The settings dialog is probably too wide, some people use win9x on a 640x480 resolution and it doesn't fit
