Local checkpoint - NOT for public release.
- RemSoundService (ServiceBase): hosts ServiceSendHost.RunLoop on a worker thread,
OnStop cancels + joins. Added System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController package.
- ServiceControl: install (sc.exe create, auto-start, careful binPath quoting) /
uninstall (stop + delete) / start / stop / status. Status query is unprivileged
(menu can poll it); the mutating verbs self-elevate via ShellExecute runas.
- Program.cs: early guards for --run-service (blocks in the SCM dispatcher) and the
one-shot elevated verbs, before the single-instance lock (the service is a
separate role and must never take the interactive lock).
- Self-test "Service registration args" verifies the sc create binPath quoting
survives a spaced exe path. Gate 20/20.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Local checkpoint - NOT for public release. First increment of the send-only
Windows service feature (design in memory/project_remsound_service).
THE SPIKE PASSED: the send engine runs fully headless (no window, no message
pump) and streams, proven by a real self-test — the one genuine unknown that
gated the whole feature. Also proves the app-yield model end to end.
What's in this increment (all headless, all tested, 19/19 gate):
- AppConfig: ServiceProfileName + ServiceLoggingEnabled (machine-wide).
- InteractivePresence (Core): the cross-session app-yield token. App holds a
Global\ mutex for its lifetime; the service checks it and yields while an
interactive app is present, resuming when it closes OR crashes (OS frees the
mutex). Name-parameterised internal seams for isolated testing.
- ServiceSendHost (App): loads a send-only profile and streams it to its peers,
WASAPI-only, no ASIO/receive. ApplyProfile/Suspend/Resume + a RunLoop that
drives them from the presence token with a settle delay. v1 sends to direct
peer addresses (LAN/port-forwarded); NAT/relay discovery stays the app's job.
- Program.cs: the interactive app now acquires the presence token at startup so
a future service yields to it.
- Tests: "Service app-yield token" (held=present, released=absent) and "Service
send host (headless stream + yield)" — streams a captured device to a local
receiver over loopback, verifies start/suspend/resume, then drives the full
RunLoop against the token (held=suspended, released=resumes-and-flows).
Still to come (later increments): the --run-service entry + Windows-service
registration, the Service menu, the 3-tab config dialog, updater integration,
docs. None user-facing yet, so nothing deployed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Local checkpoint - NOT for public release.
Ed's ask: the ASIO-toggle crash was a lifecycle-transition bug, and those take an
age to test by hand but regress easily. Automate tearing features down and adding
them back in every combination.
New self-test "Lifecycle churn" drives a REAL sender+receiver pair over loopback
through a matrix of runtime transitions and asserts no crash + bounded handles:
- audio mode changes
- send sources: empty / device loopback / process-loopback (own pid) / both,
reconfigured repeatedly so the process-loopback capture is torn down and rebuilt
many times (the mechanism that hard-crashed)
- receive outputs on/off
- per-peer pan + parametric EQ: none / volume-only / full pan+EQ chain
- codec (PCM/Opus) and tight-latency toggles
- a rapid WASAPI-only reconfigure loop (no mode changes, never abuses hardware)
Any unsafe teardown crashes the test process and fails the gate; it also checks
handle growth stays bounded across the churn (caught nothing leaking: +25).
Real ASIO hardware cycling is OPT-IN via REMSOUND_TEST_ASIO ("1" = first installed
driver, or a driver name) so routine builds never open - and possibly hang or lock -
a real interface. When set it adds a GENTLE ASIO on/off loop (4 toggles, 600ms settle
- some drivers stall for seconds on a quick close+reopen) with a process-loopback
source live across the toggle, i.e. the exact Ed repro. Verified on the Audient:
52 transitions, no crash.
Gate: 17/17 (default, WASAPI-only path).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Local checkpoint - NOT for public release.
Repro (Ed): in applications send mode with an app being captured, turning the
ASIO driver off hard-crashed the process. No log and no crash-report file were
written - and MixingEngine.DisposeEntry swallows managed exceptions - which points
to a native access violation, not a managed throw.
Cause: the ASIO toggle rebuilds the capture backend (ApplyAsioMode -> ApplyAudioRuntime
-> ApplySendSources), which disposes the live ProcessLoopbackCapture. The old design
released the WASAPI COM objects from the disposing thread while the capture thread
could still be inside a native GetBuffer call - a classic use-after-free / AV.
Fix: the capture thread now owns the ENTIRE COM lifecycle. It activates, runs, and
releases every COM object itself, in its finally, only after the loop has exited.
StopRecording/Dispose merely signal and join (2s) - they never touch the COM objects.
If the thread ever wedges in a native call we leak it rather than free from outside
(a rare bounded leak beats a hard crash). The thread is also explicitly MTA, and
activation moved onto it, so the async-activation callback can't stall the UI thread.
bufferReady is volatile and only disposed once the thread has genuinely exited.
Also: ApplyAsioMode force-sets the WASAPI send-list visibility for the new mode, which
resurrected the loopback-outputs list in applications mode; re-assert ApplySendModeVisibility
at the end so the correct list stays shown after an ASIO toggle.
New self-test "Per-application capture lifecycle" runs real start/stop/dispose cycles
of the native capture against our own process on hardware - a bad teardown would AV
and fail the gate. Gate: 16/16.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Local checkpoint - NOT for public release. Builds on the engine core commit.
Ed's revisions to the plan: the send-mode chooser lives on the Input/Output tab
(not Preferences), right after "Send my audio", and the setting saves per profile.
Input/Output tab:
- New "How to send WASAPI audio" listbox (Alt+6) after the send checkbox, with
two rows: send whole sound devices (classic) or send specific applications.
Switching it swaps the tab live between the loopback-outputs list and the app
section. Hidden entirely on Windows too old for process loopback (mode pinned
to devices), so nothing changes for Win7.
- Applications section: "Send all applications" master checkbox (Alt+7, ticked by
default = whole system audio, same as today) and an "Applications to send"
checked list (Alt+8) shown only when the master is unticked.
- All house controls (AccessibleCheckBox, MnemonicLabel, WireCheckedListAccessibility),
accessible names + Alt-shortcut suffixes, tab order slotted in.
Behaviour:
- App list reconciles on a 3s timer while visible: apps appear/disappear as they
open and close, ticks preserved by process NAME, and a ticked app that closes
stays in the list marked "(not running)" and resumes when it reappears.
- ApplySendSources: devices mode unchanged; applications mode sends either the
default-render loopback (send all) or one process-loopback spec per running
process of each ticked app. WASAPI mics and ASIO run alongside in both modes.
- Process-loopback sources are excluded from the single-source push-mode fast
path (it opens an MMDevice; a "proc:<pid>" id has none) - they go via MixingEngine.
- "Is anything being sent" status/tray gates account for applications mode.
Persistence moved from AppConfig to Profile: WasapiSendMode / SendAllApplications /
SelectedSendApplications. Profile round-trip self-test extended. Gate: 15/15.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Local checkpoint - NOT for public release.
Fan-out (every received stream to every selected output, no added latency):
- SessionPlayout mirror replicas fed the same decoded bytes; delicate ReadFloats untouched.
- PlayoutEngine reconciles replicas per active output lane; per-route tuner
aggregation keeps lanes from disturbing each other. Recording dispatch gated
to the recording route only.
- PeerDspChain.Clone() gives each output lane independent biquad state.
- ReceiverSelfChecks.FanOutToBothOutputs proves both lanes get audio (self-test).
Offline-marker pile-up fix:
- ResolvePeerDisplayName strips the " (offline)" marker before reuse, so a ghost
peer no longer compounds the suffix hundreds of times in the status line.
Issue #19 (Use-Windows-default follower in the loopback send list):
- DefaultLoopbackSendFollower resolves to the current default render device's
loopback spec, re-applied when the default changes.
Per-application send engine core (issue #20) - WASAPI-only, Win10 19041+ gated:
- CaptureKind.ProcessLoopback + ProcessLoopbackId ("proc:<pid>").
- AudioAppEnumerator: snapshots apps with audio sessions, tracked by process
name, releasing every session object each pass so nothing piles up.
- ProcessLoopbackCapture: IWaveIn over the process-loopback activation API
(hand-rolled COM interop; NAudio has no binding). Fixed 48k/float/stereo.
- CaptureSource IWaveIn overload; MixingEngine opens "proc:<pid>" sources with
no MMDevice and no render keepalive. ASIO path untouched.
- Self-test enumerated real apps on hardware; support gate verified.
UI (Preferences device/app mode + app checklist), ApplySendSources app specs,
and the reconcile timer are still to come. Gate: 15/15.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Multi-track recording drift fix (Ed's question — can the separate tracks drift over an hour?):
* Root: FlushPeerTracks skipped a peer that produced no samples in a render block, so a peer that
went quiet long enough for its session to be pruned (>4 s idle) would have its track fall behind
and desync. Now every peer track is padded to a full render block each cycle (silence when the
peer produced nothing), so all peer tracks stay sample-locked to the single render clock — they
can't drift apart however long the recording runs, and all end the same length. Same padding for
the single-file bypass path. OnRecordBlockComplete now carries the block's float count.
(The peer tracks are already resampled to the render clock per peer, so this makes peer-to-peer
sync exact; your own "me" track is capture-clocked — same soundcard for capture+playback = same
clock = no drift, different interfaces can drift slightly.)
* Self-test: two new steps — "Per-peer shaping DSP" (PeerDspChain unity/master-off/volume/parametric
+ ParametricToPeaking) and "v5 settings and shaping round-trip" (AppConfig defaults, NamedPeers,
MainTabOrder, parametric PeerShaping, recording default = Both).
* Logging (gated by the logging checkbox): master shaping switch, EQ-mode change, parametric band
add/delete, peer rename/clear/delete, and the applied Appearance settings after Preferences close.
* CLI: --list-profiles and --list-named-peers (read-only), in --help.
* Version bumped to 5.0; About-box changelog, RELEASE_NOTES.md and README updated for v5.
Build clean; --selftest passes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replace the running-version-vs-saved-version trigger for the "what's new" popup with a
one-shot marker the updater writes ONLY on a successful update (UpdateApplier success
path). A failed/rolled-back update never writes it (and clears any stale one), so it can
no longer re-trigger what's-new — the old best-effort flag save could lose a race during
the update churn and leave the version mismatched, which was the bug.
New WhatsNewMarker seam (Write/Exists/Consume) + a SelfTest case for the consume-once
contract. MaybeShowWhatsNewAfterUpdate now shows iff the marker is present, then deletes
it; still records LastWhatsNewVersion for the import-offer's upgrade detection.
Not released yet — bundling with the connection-retry (#15) work in the next release.
No version bump, no manual change (internal fix).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- New screen-reader hotkey "Speak the RemSound status information" (issue #13):
reads the status line aloud through the active screen reader via Tolk, fires from
anywhere (system-wide), unset by default. Built behind an IScreenReaderOutput seam
so a future build can swap Tolk for Prism on Windows 10+ without touching callers.
Tolk DLLs vendored under tolk/ and shipped next to the exe.
- New Logging tab in Preferences: Enable logs + Write logs now moved there, plus
opt-in startup "warn if logs folder exceeds N MB" and "delete logs older than N days",
and a "Delete all logs" button (Yes/No confirm). New LogMaintenance helper + AppConfig
settings drive it.
- Manual (readme.html + regenerated MANUAL.md), About changelog and RELEASE_NOTES
updated in plain English; csproj <Version> bumped to 4.3.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Audio cues
- Cues for send/receive on-off, minimise/restore, checkbox tick/untick, and tab switch
- Soft keyboard clicks while typing, with a distinct passkey sound on password fields
- Per-cue "Choose sound" variant picker; "(none)" silences a cue; front-most missing-sound warning
- Send/receive cues take priority over the generic checkbox sound; programmatic ticks stay silent
Preferences
- Redesigned into four tabs (General, Audio cues, Startup behaviour, Update settings)
- Startup behaviour moved in from the Options menu
- NVDA now announces the dialog on open (focus a real named control, not the quiet tab control)
Auto-tune
- Cause-aware: tells device render-callback stalls (more buffer can't fix) apart from genuine
network/buffer starvation, so it no longer pins latency high on chunky onboard cards
- Lowering the target eases the buffer down (glide) instead of trimming it, so no clicks while tuning
Sounds layout
- Shipped defaults moved out of the per-user folder into an install-side "default sounds" folder,
so updates can refresh them; user customs are Browse-picked file paths and are left untouched
- Startup migration removes both legacy sound folders; verified from oldest (v1.0-v3.3) and v3.4 layouts
Quiet automated launches
- New --silent launch flag mutes all cue sounds and suppresses the startup dialogs (migration notice,
update check, Realtek/mic/missing-sound warnings) so test launches never disturb the user
- run-tests / build-release / SelfTest repointed to the new "default sounds" layout
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Preferences dialog is now a QuietTabControl with four tabs (same accessible tab approach as
the main window; Ctrl+Tab / arrows switch tabs):
- General: profiles-folder browse, accept-remote-volume, UPnP, enable logs / write logs now.
- Audio cues: the redesigned cue UI (plain cue list + "(none)" sound option) + keyboard clicks.
- Startup behaviour: Start minimised / Start with Windows / Start with a specific profile -
moved here from the standalone Options-menu dialog, wiring and persistence unchanged (AppConfig
+ the Windows auto-start registry entry).
- Update settings: startup-check, frequency, check-now, silent-install, show-what's-new.
Removed the Options-menu "Startup behaviour" item and deleted the now-unused
StartupBehaviourDialog.cs (and dropped it from the self-test's accessibility audit). The audit
still passes on the tabbed dialog with no mnemonic clashes (Alt-letters are isolated per tab).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Part 1 - "Uncheck all inputs and outputs" button now also resets the ASIO driver to "(none)":
renamed to say so, and UncheckAllDevices sets asioDriverBox to row 0 for a full clean
WASAPI-only, nothing-selected state.
Part 2 - checkbox tick/untick sounds: every checkbox toggle anywhere in RemSound now plays a
short cue (check.wav on tick, uncheck.wav on untick) - instant feedback on which way a box
went, especially in the inputs/outputs lists. New CheckSoundService + two machine-wide cues
(CheckboxOn/Off) with the usual numbered-variant + Preferences treatment. Hooked from
AccessibleCheckBox.OnCheckedChanged and the device lists' WireCheckedListAccessibility, both
gated on the control being Focused so a genuine user toggle clicks but bulk programmatic
(un)checking (profile load, "uncheck all") stays silent. Reloaded at startup and on cue change.
Tests + manual updated; .sfk byproducts cleared.
Remaining for the overhaul (next): tabbed Preferences (General / Audio cues / Startup behaviour /
Update settings), the cue-list redesign with a "none" option replacing per-cue checkboxes, moving
Startup behaviour out of the Options menu, and a front-most "missing sound file" error.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Six new machine-wide cues, each with the same numbered-variant + Preferences treatment as
the others (enable tickbox, Choose default sound picker, Play/Browse):
- Send turned on / off, Receive turned on / off: fire from OnStreamingCheckboxChanged, so
they sound whether the user clicked the in-window tickbox or pressed the mute shortcut
(the hotkey flips .Checked, which routes through the same handler). Suppressed during
profile load by the existing password-gate guard, so loading a profile doesn't blast them.
- Minimise (hide) / Restore (show): fire from the tray controller's Minimize()/Restore() on a
genuine visibility transition (guarded against no-op / startup-minimise).
Enable flags + custom-WAV overrides for these six live machine-wide in AppConfig
(EnableSendOnCue.., MachineCueCustomPaths) - they're app-level feedback, not per-profile
audio - so no Profile/settings-cache plumbing. TryLoadCueSound now also honours the
machine-wide custom path. PreferencesDialog gains a MachineRow helper + the six rows.
Sounds: shipped via the existing sounds\*.wav wildcard. Fixed an obvious typo in the
supplied files ("rcieve off 1.wav" -> "recieve off 1.wav") so receive-off has both variants.
Renamed the old single-name cue WAVs to Ed's numbered-variant set; added key/passkey and the
new cue sounds.
build-release.ps1: new step deletes the SoundForge .sfk peak-file byproducts from sounds\
before packaging (they never shipped - build is *.wav only - this just keeps the tree tidy).
Tests + manual updated for the six new cues.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Cue sounds now ship as numbered variants ("connect 1.wav", "connect 2.wav", ...); the
count is never hard-coded so more can be added with no code change.
- CueSounds.cs: discovers a cue's "<base> <n>.wav" variants (case-insensitive) and
resolves the active default: per-profile custom WAV > machine-wide chosen variant >
first variant > silent. Wired into MainForm.TryLoadCueSound, the startup cue in
Program.cs, and PreferencesDialog.ResolveCueFilePath.
- AppConfig: DefaultCueSounds (machine-wide cueId -> chosen filename) and
EnableKeyboardClicks (on by default).
- Preferences: a "Choose default sound" listbox under the cue checklist - it lists the
selected cue's variants, arrowing it previews each sound and makes it that cue's
default. Plus a "Play keyboard clicks when typing into any edit field" checkbox.
- KeyClickService.cs: an app-wide WM_CHAR message filter + a low-latency NAudio mixer.
Typing into any edit field plays a random key click (key 1..N.wav); password fields
also play passkey.wav at the same instant. On/off live from the Preferences toggle.
Inert if the sounds are missing or the device won't open; never consumes the keystroke.
- csproj: ship every sounds\*.wav via a wildcard (variants, key clicks, passkey, future
additions) instead of stale per-file canonical names.
- Tests: resource checks (self-test + run-tests.ps1) now verify each cue has >=1 variant
and that key 1.wav / passkey.wav are present. Accessibility audit still green with the
new Preferences controls (Alt+D, Alt+K - no mnemonic clashes).
- Manual: variant picker, keyboard clicks, and the new sound-file naming documented.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Andre's three "bigger ideas" from RemSound-smoke-test-agent-brief.md:
- Richer diagnostics: --diagnostics now includes a live localhost audio self-check
(PCM + Opus, with packet/underrun/drop/buffer/latency counters), the most recent
session snapshot parsed from the log (codec, send/receive state, buffer, drops,
heartbeat), and a recent-warnings/errors digest from the log. BuildDiagnosticsReport
gained a runLiveAudioProbe flag so the self-test's privacy check stays fast.
- Headless accessibility audit: new --selftest step constructs the dialogs that can be
built without hardware (Startup behaviour, Recording settings, Preferences) and checks
every actionable control announces a name and that Alt-key mnemonics are unique within
a container. MainForm is out of scope (its constructor opens audio/hotkeys/sockets).
Dialogs that won't construct are skipped, not failed. Currently audits 3, no violations.
- Perf/leak sanity: new --perftest command runs several audio-loopback cycles and reports
whether handle/memory/thread counts stay bounded (handles ratcheting up cycle-on-cycle is
the leak fingerprint, given RemSound's handle-leak history). Lenient thresholds; logs the
numbers for build-to-build comparison. Wired into run-tests.ps1.
- Shared AudioLoopback helper (used by the self-test, diagnostics and perf test) so all
three exercise the identical real capture/encode/network/decode path on test port 47929.
- csproj: the four previously-unconditional cue Content items are now Exists-guarded like
the rest, so a mid-edit sounds\ folder doesn't break the dev build; the gate still
enforces the required cues before release.
Help + manual updated (--perftest, --smoke-test, --config-dir, richer --selftest).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The test suite, modelled on Andre's Sensor Readout (an in-app self-test + a build
script), runnable as one step before every publish.
Part 1 - in-app multi-step self-test (SelfTest.cs), run by --selftest:
audio round-trip (PCM + Opus over localhost, dedicated test port so it never
clashes with a running instance), encryption right/wrong-password + fingerprint,
packet framing + malformed rejection, client<->server wire-format compatibility,
settings save/reload, profile save/reload (temp folder), diagnostics-report
privacy (never leaks a password), and bundled-resources present. Each step is
timed and reported PASS/FAIL/SKIP; exit 0 only if nothing failed. Replaces the
old single-shot --selftest. RunDiagnostics refactored to expose
BuildDiagnosticsReport(AppConfig) for the privacy step.
Part 2 - run-tests.ps1: builds, then checks the package (sounds, readme, native
opus, framework-dependent, dll version == csproj), the About-box changelog, the
client/server wire contract (relay magic/version/port still match RemPacket),
the CLI surface, and runs --selftest. build-release.ps1 now runs this gate first
and aborts the release if it fails.
Bug caught + fixed: the published release zip carried ZERO cue sounds (startup
sound + connect/disconnect/etc.) - MSBuild's incremental Content-copy marker
skipped sounds\ on a fresh publish. Added an AfterTargets=Publish copy in the
csproj that lands every cue WAV in the published sounds\ folder regardless of
the marker. Verified: a staging publish now contains all 9 cue WAVs.
Manual/help: --selftest description updated (readme.html + MANUAL.md).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
EdnunpandClaude Opus 4.8