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Appendix A — Troubleshooting

"Input device not found" or empty dropdown

Cause: the OS isn't exposing any input device, or one was unplugged after launch.

Fix: ensure the device is plugged in and not muted at the OS level (Windows Sound settings). Then click the Refresh button on the Record tab — TinyBooth re-enumerates devices on demand.

"Stereo (Ch 1+Ch 2)" option doesn't appear

Cause: the selected device reports only one channel.

Most cheap USB mics are 1-channel even if you expected stereo. Check the device's configuration in Windows Sound → Device properties → Advanced. If the device truly is single-channel hardware (e.g. a Blue Yeti in cardioid mode), there is no stereo to capture; use Mixdown.

Recording sounds quiet / hot / clipped

Open Admin → Recording-tone profiles… and check the active profile's Input gain field. Negative values attenuate; positive values boost. The peak meter on the Record tab is the truth — aim for it to sit between -12 and -6 dB on the loudest moments and never pin red.

If the input is hot before TinyBooth even sees it (the level is high before the gain stage), reduce the OS-level input volume in Windows Sound settings. TinyBooth respects OS gain.

Export options are greyed out with "(ffmpeg missing)"

Cause: TinyBooth ships a bundled ffmpeg.exe next to the main binary in any MSI install — so this should never happen on a release-installed copy. You're seeing this if you're running a source build (cargo run, cargo build --release) without an ffmpeg on PATH or in the target dir.

Fix on a source build:

  1. Drop ffmpeg.exe in the same folder as tinybooth-sound-studio.exe, OR
  2. Install ffmpeg system-wide: winget install Gyan.FFmpeg (then reopen TinyBooth).

If you're seeing this on an MSI-installed copy, the bundled ffmpeg.exe may be missing from the install dir — try reinstalling from the latest GitHub release.

WAV export always works without ffmpeg, in any case.

Self-update click does nothing

Cause: usually offline, occasionally GitHub is rate-limiting. Less commonly, your Windows Defender or AV is intercepting the elevated msiexec launch.

Fix: confirm internet, retry by clicking the version label again. If you're certain there's a new release on GitHub but the click silently fails, download the MSI manually from the releases page.

The Manual window doesn't open with F1

Cause: another egui widget has captured keyboard focus and is consuming the F1 keypress (e.g. you're typing in a text field).

Fix: click outside the text field, then press F1. Alternatively, Help → Manual… is always available.

Project file fails to load

Cause: corrupted manifest JSON, or a track WAV file moved/deleted since save.

The project will still load if you can fix the manifest by hand — it's plain JSON. Open project.tinybooth in a text editor; the schema is documented in Appendix B — File formats.

Crashes / unhandled errors

These are bugs. The app is small enough that a crash is reproducible — note what you were doing and open an issue at https://github.com/ophiocus/TinyBoothSoundStudio/issues. Logs, if any, go to stderr; running TinyBooth from a terminal will surface them.