Its a small volume meter widget for ObjectDock and AveDesk. Like the scales you get on older hifi equipment. Its skinnable by drawing a lot of graphics and editing an ini-File. I always wanted to have that on my dock or desktop.
Sorry. I had to drop that because it didn't work at all.
Expand the archive this text is in to:
C:\Program Files\StarDock\ObjectDock\Docklets
or the equivalent AveDesk folder. Make sure that there is the following folder structure:
ObjectDock\Docklets
ObjectDock\Docklets\vuMeter
ObjectDock\Docklets\vuMeter\Skins
ObjectDock\Docklets\vuMeter\Skins\Default
and some more folders below Skins.
Right click on it and click start/stop. Play some music in your iTunes/WinAmp whatever. Scales should move. Click on Docklet Settings and pick a skin if you don't like the default one.
Seemingly you have to select a record source first - by clicking "Recorder Volume", you will see this dialog:
Pick Stereo-Downmix or whatever sound source seems fit; e.g. if you only ever want your Audio- CDs on the scales, select accordingly: select while looking at the scales. Some hardware may allow you selecting multiple sources while some other will only allow one. Pick wisely!
Turn the record volume down. (See image above)
Try deselect some other input sources or turn their volume down. Alternatively, select "Average" instead of "Peak".
Sorry. Ask your nearest hardware doctor. Try to record something with sndrec32.exe. If this is still too loud when replayed, no matter what you or he does, your soundcard is likely utter crap. Sorry again.
Try to be concise on what it is recording. Also, skins that are larger than, say 64x64 or 128x32, can get time consuming. It also depends of the speed of your GFX card. If the card isn't fast enough or the system isn't built very well, the system will overompensate with CPU usage. Design your skins so that they aren't scaled.
Thats the intent. It can achieve that because of its skins being taylored to no measurable rendering calculation - its just copying cached memory, and thanks to the marvels of DMA, this happens without CPU intervention, really.
Another program is occupying the recorder. Close that program. No, you can't run it in AveDesk and ObjectDock at the same time unless one of them is stopped. No, I can't tell you who is occupying the recorder. Perhaps a crashed instance of ObjectDock that is still in memory?
Yes, it does that rarely. I blame it on the built in evils of utilizing global hooks. Only workaround: Stop it before removing.
It does not forgive errors at all. Most common errors are:
are all awarded with an immediate crash. C'mon, it's faster that way. Just look at the present ini files to figure out.
It can't provide a new frame every 5 ms by doing that. Copying one or two of the same bundle of images to the screen is much more efficient than drawing, rotating or scaling, because it can be delegated to the card rather than the CPU. Make sure that your images won't be caled, let Right-Left be equal to the actual width, Bottom - Top be equal to actual height of the frame. If I'd rotate an image or draw a line, all you would get would be a slideshow with 100% CPU. No, I'm not using DirectX here. However, I'm considering a helper tool to aid skin generation.
Use .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg if you wish.
Come to www.aqua-soft.org - You'll find help on the "AveDesk" SubForum under "Community Applications". Please make sure to read the forums before asking. Better PM me (herd) than blindly asking the same goo that has been answered already. Use the search feature.
If you don't like Aqua-Soft, are banned from there or whatever, I'm regularly checking my PMs as user herd at:
The screenshot here is by Kevin Kalla - thanks a lot.