Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 August 22

= August 22 =

alternating right and left speakers
I need to make the computer play all sounds alternating through the left and then right speaker at 1 second intervals. How can I accomplish this via the command line? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rorcheeur (talk • contribs) 16:25, 22 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm going to guess that you're running Windows, simply because people who don't mention their operating system are usually running Windows. If you're running a different OS, ignore what follows but please post which OS you're using.  The nircmd tool can control the speaker volume and balance.  You'll probably want to write a cmd loop to repeatedly call nircmd. (I'm not even going to ask why you want to do this bizarre thing.) CodeTalker (talk) 23:09, 22 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The ffmpeg command can achieve what you want. Here https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#apulsator seems to be the exact thing you want to do. ffmpeg works on all major desktop operating systems. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:31, 23 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about that. ffmpeg takes one or more files as input and produces one file as output.  The OP says they want "all sounds" to be modified, presumably not just a single audio file, but also dynamically produced output such as game sounds, system beeps, etc.  So the only way I see ffmpeg working is if there were some way to insert it into the audio pipeline just before the output reaches the speaker driver.  Are you assuming there's a way to do that in the OP's operating system?  CodeTalker (talk) 03:57, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * You would probably need Linux to do something like that with ffmpeg, but it can process sound files like mp3s. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:12, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks everyone.
 * It should be possible to write a program that moves the Master Balance (for audio out) fully to the left, and then fully to the right. However, that just mutes the other speaker - if the audio source is different on the left & right, then it won't downmix to mono first.
 * If you just want to test your speakers, then you can do this manually, or there a several "speaker test" files on YouTube that play audio alternating between left&right channels. LongHairedFop (talk) 15:18, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Google translates instead of giving results
Sometimes when I try to search something related to countries, Google automatically thinks I want the phrase in that particular country's language and only gives me the Google Translate infobox with a translation but no 0 actual results. How to bypass this nonsense? --94.134.89.229 (talk) 23:40, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Could you give an example that's misbehaving for you? &rsaquo; Mortee  talk 01:41, 23 August 2018 (UTC)