User suggestion: allow adaptive sounds and speaker sounds to be independently activated

[oliver-phet]

Thank you for including the adaptive sounds on your simulations. One minor thought: On Waves Intro - Sound PhET, it would be great if the adaptive sounds could be turned on and off independently from the "speaker" sounds. As it is, when you play the "tone" and the microphone's pressure vs. time graph is on, there's a lot of sounds happening at once, and I'd like to be able to distinguish between the model of the speaker and the actual speaker separately as opposed at the same time (but still look at the pressure-time graph).

Assigning to @jbphet for now.

[jbphet]

I've transferred this issue to the waves-intro repo, since the request involved that sim. If it leads to larger changes to how we control sound for all sims, we'll log specific issues for those.

I'll bring this up in the next sound design meeting and we will decide where to go with it from there.

[jbphet]

This was discussed at the 3/23/2021 sounds design meeting. We're pretty sure that the user is saying that they find it confusing when the WaveMeterNode is generating sounds at the same time that the tone from the speaker is playing. @emily-phet recalls that this was discussed during the design process, but that it was decided to have them all play together.

Since this seems pretty sim-specific, I'm assigning it to @kathy-phet and @samreid to decide whether they feel that anything about the sound design should be modified, such as implementing more ducking, having a mute button the the wave meter or something else.

[samreid]

Also assigning the lead designer for the simulation, @arouinfar.

[samreid]

@kathy-phet and @arouinfar can you please recommend how to proceed? I don't recall the reason we didn't want to be able to hear these sounds independently.

[emily-phet]

Just a few thoughts that came to mind:

• I don't think the user is saying they are confused, just saying that they would like to be able to choose when they're hearing Sound screen tone, and when they're hearing the time graph. They say above they like both of these sounds, but want to be able to hear them separately.
• It doesn't read to me like this is a "dealbreaker" (so to speak) from this user, so it might be something to take forward into future designs, but not address directly now. If my memory is correct, controlling the sound on the tools individually was not addressed previously because it could require changes to the visual display of the tool, and also get confusing when all sound is disabled. Doesn't mean it's not something we can tackle, especially with the possibilities that come up for more advanced customization of sound with the new Preferences menu, but you might consider tackling it going forward rather than returning to this sim specifically.

[kathy-phet]

I think this could be quite easily addressed by ducking the WaveMeterNode just as we duck the speaker sound entirely when the tone is playing. @arouinfar what do you think?

[arouinfar]

Thanks for your input @emily-phet! I think it's definitely something to think about moving forward, especially for complex layered sounds.

I think this could be quite easily addressed by ducking the WaveMeterNode just as we duck the speaker sound entirely when the tone is playing. @arouinfar what do you think?

My first thought when reading the user's feedback was the ducking should address this sort of concern. When Play Tone is checked, it should be the primary pedagogical sound that is heard. It sounds like we are completely turning off the speaker membrane sound (or it's ducked so much that I can't pick it up). We also duck the WaveMeterNode sound when Play Tone is checked. However, I don't think we're ducking it enough. When the probe is close to the lattice origin, the WaveMeterNode sounds start to compete with the tone.

Around this point, the WaveMeterNode matches the tone in prominence.

There may be cases in the future where may need to consider direct user control of the various sounds, but I think the primary issue here is the ducking. It needs to be more aggressive. Looking at WaveMeterNode.js, the ducking level is easy to adjust. I experimented locally and cut the duckFactor in half, setting it to 0.1 : 1. The WaveMeterNode sound is faintly audible in the background and doesn't compete with the tone.

I don't think the current issue is particularly serious, and I agree with @emily-phet's assessment of the user's feedback. That said, this seems like an easy thing to handle in a maintenance release if folks like updated duckFactor, and as @samreid's time would allow.

@samreid can you change the value of the duckFactor to 0.1 : 1 in master so @kathy-phet can test it out?

[samreid]

Sorry for the delay in this issue. @arouinfar can you please review the commit and see if it is ready for @kathy-phet to test?

[arouinfar]

Thanks @samreid, commit looks good so I'll pass this off to @kathy-phet to review and decide the priority of a MR.