Recommended Posts

This happens to me sometimes, especially when I have Skype running; I think it has to do something with the default sound device and their respective drivers.

Ok, that might be the case. I have Skype running as well. But I have disabled reducing the volume when communication is active. The default there is 80%.

Tfivs.png

^^ How do you get that dialog to appear... and where does it appear?!

It's supposed to display if you press the volume keys on your keyboard (or tablet). I've got a logitech keyboard with SetPoint installed, and it won't display with the volume keys, just with pressing the play/pause button on the keyboard (which doesn't actually pause). It will display in the top left corner of the window when you get it.

Not sure if this should go in a separate thread or not, but has anyone else had issues with playing Zune Pass downloaded music in the Xbox Music App (or vice versa)? It seems it actually sets them with a different drm provider, so even though the account and subscription work in both apps, they can't license the music. It's a bit annoying since I have a bunch of stuff downloaded through Zune that I would have to re-download through Xbox Music to be able to play...

It's supposed to display if you press the volume keys on your keyboard (or tablet). I've got a logitech keyboard with SetPoint installed, and it won't display with the volume keys, just with pressing the play/pause button on the keyboard (which doesn't actually pause). It will display in the top left corner of the window when you get it.

Not sure if this should go in a separate thread or not, but has anyone else had issues with playing Zune Pass downloaded music in the Xbox Music App (or vice versa)? It seems it actually sets them with a different drm provider, so even though the account and subscription work in both apps, they can't license the music. It's a bit annoying since I have a bunch of stuff downloaded through Zune that I would have to re-download through Xbox Music to be able to play...

Yes the Zune/Xbox music problem ****es me off to no end. I just use the music app for streaming.

Ok, that might be the case. I have Skype running as well. But I have disabled reducing the volume when communication is active. The default there is 80%.

As far as I have noticed, whenever I enter a Skype call (desktop app), the Music app immediately gets quieter to a point in which I can barely hear it. The Music app then proceeds to work normally when I close Skype.

EDIT: The volume of the Music app gets extremely quiet when I switch from the app to my desktop (with Skype), then volumates (yeah, vol-ume-mates) back to normal when I switch back to the app.

I had what I believe to be the same issue also with the sound. I would be streaming music from the metro Xbox music app and go to the desktop, that?s when the audio from that app would get quieter like background music and no volume setting was changed.

My mainboard is an Asus P6X58-E WS which has a Realtek ALC889. I noticed this issue sometime after I installed the drivers for them. Windows 8 doesn?t seem to power down the computer anymore and puts it into what I believe is an S5 sleep state. I think this was a sound driver save state issue of some kind with the fast startup feature in Windows 8. Anyways I believe I remedied the issue by actually shutting down the computer.

Pick your solution:

  1. Hold shift when clicking reset to get the recovery option and choose ?Turn off my computer?.
  2. Hold shift when clicking shutdown to skip fast startup.
  3. Disable ?Turn on fast startup? under power options and ?Define power buttons?? (This might be good if the issue keeps reoccurring)
  4. Use the regular shutdown and unplug or hit the power switch on your power supply.

Options 1, 2 confirms an actual shutdown on my computer. I have a sidewinder x6 keyboard and when I do the regular shutdown and press a key the red LED lights blink, which is kind of cool.

After my computer did a cold boot I didn?t have any more sound issues, at least not yet. If this doesn?t work, oh well it?s new and hopefully something gets fixed. I also claim to not know much, if anything about computers. I don?t believe all mainboards support S5 so that could explain why other people aren?t getting the same issue.

I got that problem too but it's not regular - after boot the app works fine, I can send it to the background and it will play music fine. But after some time it becomes so quiet that I can barely hear it and it won't fix until I reboot the computer. Problem is, I didn't start Skype or any other voice communicator a single time while running Music app.

I got that problem too but it's not regular - after boot the app works fine, I can send it to the background and it will play music fine. But after some time it becomes so quiet that I can barely hear it and it won't fix until I reboot the computer. Problem is, I didn't start Skype or any other voice communicator a single time while running Music app.

Did you plug in any other devices? The Music app exhibits the same problem whenever I plugin my Zune device.

Check the Sound > Communications settings. If you have an another application that uses your microphone or some other voice/sound/communication-related device, Windows will automatically reduce sounds from other applications in order to give the communication app (like Skype, for instance) priority. This is on be default and needs to be disabled. I've found that it usually works fine, but every so often it'll reduce my volume when it shouldn't, because another app is being defined as 'communicating'.

Check the Sound > Communications settings. If you have an another application that uses your microphone or some other voice/sound/communication-related device, Windows will automatically reduce sounds from other applications in order to give the communication app (like Skype, for instance) priority. This is on be default and needs to be disabled. I've found that it usually works fine, but every so often it'll reduce my volume when it shouldn't, because another app is being defined as 'communicating'.

I checked that in the options, you can actually turn that off which I'd done. I closed Skype and opened the Music app again, began playing music and left the app. The music now plays at full volume out the app. I opened Skype after music began playing and it seems to be sorted. Whether it was a bug or because I opened Skype AFTER Music I'm not sure. But it's fixed now.

I checked that in the options, you can actually turn that off which I'd done. I closed Skype and opened the Music app again, began playing music and left the app. The music now plays at full volume out the app. I opened Skype after music began playing and it seems to be sorted. Whether it was a bug or because I opened Skype AFTER Music I'm not sure. But it's fixed now.

On my system, music volume is reduced only when I get a call on Skype.

I checked that in the options, you can actually turn that off which I'd done. I closed Skype and opened the Music app again, began playing music and left the app. The music now plays at full volume out the app. I opened Skype after music began playing and it seems to be sorted. Whether it was a bug or because I opened Skype AFTER Music I'm not sure. But it's fixed now.

I hate to say this again, but maybe it's a driver and or app issue? It sounds like it's by design, i.e. you go into another communications app like skype or something so the music volume goes lower, sounds good. But maybe there's a mixup and apps or the audio driver don't handle it right all the time? It seems this does in fact work fine for some people, it only lowers when skype kicks in with a call etc.

  • 4 weeks later...

McKay,

I noticed you have steam running. If you initiate voice chat in it it will lower your volume and seems like it will glitch out and leave it that way. If you close out steam your volume should return to normal. At least this worked for me.

Windows 8 RTM

Asus P8z68-V PRO/GEN3

Core i5 2500k OCed to 4.5Ghz

Corsair Hydro 80 watercooling

8GB DDR3 2133 (Oced to 2200)

ATI Radeon HD 7850

x2 250GB HDDs Raided, 1TB, and 750GB HDDs

Raidmax 850W Modular PSU

Hooked to an LG55LW6500 HDTV

McKay,

I noticed you have steam running. If you initiate voice chat in it it will lower your volume and seems like it will glitch out and leave it that way. If you close out steam your volume should return to normal. At least this worked for me.

Windows 8 RTM

Asus P8z68-V PRO/GEN3

Core i5 2500k OCed to 4.5Ghz

Corsair Hydro 80 watercooling

8GB DDR3 2133 (Oced to 2200)

ATI Radeon HD 7850

x2 250GB HDDs Raided, 1TB, and 750GB HDDs

Raidmax 850W Modular PSU

Hooked to an LG55LW6500 HDTV

did you try turning off this?

post-62693-0-05056200-1347430948.png

I had this problem in the VM and the standard HDD install :-( The music app is so buggy I can't belive MS let this out.... I can understand a 1 person indie app but for the major corp. MS is it's in-excusable. I wish they would overhaul it and make it less laggy, buggy and think of us all that have more then 200 songs in our entire collection.... hell a 100 song PL is too hard for the music app to deal with. let alone ONE of my 2000+ song playlists like my ENTIRE Future Trance or Dream Dance or my custom "In Love With The Club Mix" series that has 12 vols with 35 tracks per vol. FT has like 40+ tracks per vol and there are now 61 vols and 5 in the mix and a limited edition and 2 best of compilations.... Dream Dance is up to 64 vols!!!!!!! I dare anyone to load a large playlist and let me know how it handles and how painful it is to have a large playlist loaded.

Yes the Zune/Xbox music problem ****es me off to no end. I just use the music app for streaming.

How do you play a stream in music app? I tried to open a web stream playlist file, but it can't play it.

I had this problem in the VM and the standard HDD install :-( The music app is so buggy I can't belive MS let this out.... I can understand a 1 person indie app but for the major corp. MS is it's in-excusable. I wish they would overhaul it and make it less laggy, buggy and think of us all that have more then 200 songs in our entire collection.... hell a 100 song PL is too hard for the music app to deal with. let alone ONE of my 2000+ song playlists like my ENTIRE Future Trance or Dream Dance or my custom "In Love With The Club Mix" series that has 12 vols with 35 tracks per vol. FT has like 40+ tracks per vol and there are now 61 vols and 5 in the mix and a limited edition and 2 best of compilations.... Dream Dance is up to 64 vols!!!!!!! I dare anyone to load a large playlist and let me know how it handles and how painful it is to have a large playlist loaded.

uh...Windows 8 is not released yet. It is perfectly ok for these apps to be buggy (until 10/26/2012).

uh...Windows 8 is not released yet. It is perfectly ok for these apps to be buggy (until 10/26/2012).

not as buggy as they are they act like alpha version apps and windows 8 is far along.... too far along for that....

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • Yup, that's a doozy right there 😄
    • It's a bundle of tools created by a variety of people, so things can go wrong sometimes. It's a great addition to Windows, and I use a lot of the tools on a daily basis. Also, it's still a 0.**** release so quick updates are to be expected 😉
    • Oh, I did. And it's even worse than I was hoping! Besides a lot of techno-babble jargon (yes I understand 100% of it but it's still all just techno-babble) there's 2 key points that make me super-weary about even considering testing this out. -- By default, after installation, a relay is automatically set up, so you do not need to care about that. * Non-chatmail apps use email servers as a long-term message archive while chatmail clients use email servers for ephemeral instant message relay. * Supporting the full variety of classic email setups would require considerable development and maintenance efforts, and complicate making chatmail-based messaging more resilient, reliable and fast. -- Basically, the end-user device is the 'server' (relay) so there is NO ARCHIVING whatsoever because every message is necessarily ephemeral. Great for techno-paranoia (and for illicit activities preferring no tracks to cover) but terrible for everybody else. It's also ironically contradictory to engineering principles of redundancies besides the transport layers due to the explicit absence of any persistent storage. Instead of 'classic email address' retaining multi-GB messaging archives on its server, now every device must retain 100% of those storage demands. (Email messages were originally meant to be short correspondences, not the multi-MB attachments boondoggle that now exists with unlimited spam engines flooding every potential recipient.) Any device swap or reset (or loss) makes the entire message history go bye-bye forever... lest there's an off-device auto-archival "relay" mechanism that's really a separate server that holds onto all transported messages (an email server) that utilizes 'chatmail email address' identities (like an email server) and its own persistent storage archive (like an email server). But... this solution is hoping to exist alongside real-world email address identities (based on the email server relay pathway) but simply render messages in chat thread format in an ephemeral manner (with contents being encrypted, and messages auto-expiring) ... In the end, it's a chat app/experience for the Web3/P2P-at-all-costs zealots. (I have accts on all sorts of federated web3 services so I understand the technical and non-technical alike.) For any practical users, however, it's just another service to download/install, register, cross-share id cards/qr codes, but know that there's no history/archive whatsoever (by design) so no account/message recovery whatsoever... update the device, install a bummed update patch, or dare upgrade your device... all history, poof, gone. Ya gotta start everything over again like they're a brand new person.
    • You've tried DuckDuckGo and Brave Search, now get serious with SearXNG by Paul Hill Over the last decade, it has become quite trendy to dump Google Search in favor of privacy-preserving alternatives such as DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Brave Search. These search engines have done a very good job at highlighting dodgy practices by Google, such as adjusting search results based on what it thinks you’ll like (filter bubble) and stalking you around the web to advertise to you. While these search engines are good starting points when compared to non-private services like Google, there are still quite a few issues with them. For example, both DuckDuckGo and Brave Search require running non-free JavaScript in your web browser, which is comparable to running proprietary software on your computer, meaning you can be sure about what it’s actually doing in the background. Another issue is that these search engines are hosted on the respective companies’ servers, and you are using a service that you don’t control. Finally, DuckDuckGo, while offering privacy features, relies heavily on Microsoft’s infrastructure for its results and, in the past, has permitted Microsoft tracking scripts. If you are looking for a more private search solution than DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, and Startpage, then I recommend taking a look at SearXNG. It is a privacy-respecting metasearch engine that can be used via different public instances, which is useful for mobile users, or you can install it on your computer or server and run it locally with maximum control. Unlike Google, Bing, or Brave Search, which crawl the web and have their own search indexes, SearXNG is a metasearch engine, meaning it taps other search engines, stripping your identifying data, such as IP address, user agent, and cookies, in the process. Your search query is sent to the other search engines you enable before aggregating the results. SearXNG has deployment flexibility. If you are a casual user or a mobile user and don’t want to run SearXNG locally, you can use a public instance that is hosted by someone else. The main problem with this is that you are putting trust in the maintainer of the instance regarding stuff like logs that they may keep; good hosts should have a privacy policy explaining their policies. If you are trying to use SearXNG, you can also install the software on your device and then head to 127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser and search from there. While you don’t have to worry about a third-party admin like the public instances, search engines could ultimately block your IP address if they frown on you pulling in their search results locally. If you want to run it locally, it’s a good idea to use proxies or VPNs to hide your actual IP. You don’t have to worry about this with a public instance, as search engines never see your IP address. The main privacy benefit of using SearXNG is that it isolates your identity from the underlying engines that it’s capable of searching, such as Google and Bing. These search engines will only see requests coming from a generic server, so they can’t profile you and create a bubble filter that influences what results you see. This also ensures that your search engine doesn’t turn into an echo chamber that prevents you from reading alternative points of view. As a free software project, you are allowed to inspect SearXNG to make sure there are no negative features bundled inside. This sets it apart from the privacy search engines mentioned earlier because you can’t check their source code. As a meta search engine, you are not restricted to getting results from one source. Due to the fact that it scrapes content from other websites, your SearXNG instance will periodically get blocked from different providers, so it’s good to select a range of sources as a backup. While enabling all of the services will give you great results, this can make searching slower. I am personally happy with slower searches for the best results, but you can always check which providers are slowing down your search from the search results page and disable them to speed things up. If you want decent results quickly, enable the main search providers such as Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Bing, and Yahoo. This way, you get wide coverage without the latency. On the Engines tab in Preferences, do note that there are different tabs, such as General, Images, and Videos, with their own providers that can be toggled and are not covered by "Enable all" while on the General tab, so be sure to dig into each. Just a note, if you want to enable everything, press "Enable all" in one tab, then hit save at the bottom of the page, then do the next tab, and so on. If you press "Enable all", then do that in each tab, and then save, nothing will stick. When I had just some of the search engines enabled, I searched “define nefarious” and results came back with the definition of “define” - obviously that was a sucky result. However, when I had everything enabled, it found dictionary pages for the word “nefarious” and even had an inline definition on the sidebar, which is quite nice too - that was delivered by WolframAlpha for anyone wondering! Probably the worst thing about this meta search engine is that the engines you select are saved with a cookie, so you must enable them on every new device you use SearXNG on, including if you decide to go into incognito mode with your web browser. Honestly, I would say this is the most annoying aspect, and perhaps if your browser lets you choose a separate private browsing search engine, then it would be best to use DuckDuckGo for this portion of your browsing. Another weakness of SearXNG is the random blocking of it by search providers. When you are on the results page, expand the “Response time” box, and it will show things like “Suspended: too many requests” or “access denied”. This is why it is good to enable several providers so that there is always a fallback to get results from. I won’t pretend SearXNG will be for everyone, however, if you enable all of the providers and put up with the slower response time, the results can be really amazing. Even if you don’t want to use it as your daily driver, keeping a bookmark handy that links to it is a good idea if you ever feel like doing a deep dive into a niche topic where other search engines are just failing to bring up any good result, due to the amount of sources it looks on. If you’re interested in radical user control over the software you use, installing SearXNG locally can also be a good idea, but be prepared to be temporarily blocked from sites if you trigger bot sensors without a VPN. Personally, I’ve opted to use a public instance, rather than install it myself. If you want to use it via a public instance, head over to searx.space to find a provider. Let us know in the comments if you have used SearXNG or its predecessor, Searx. What do you think about the quality of the results?
    • Dear Neowin, If it is not too much trouble, can you start using the new-ish designations for Insider Preview? "Experimental" is different than "former Dev" as it can apply to different models, eg 26H1 or 26H2 etc, right? No need to seed confusion IMHO. And, please "finally" update your graphics. OK?
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      503
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      226
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      158
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!